YMMV / Scootertrix the Abridged

• Accidental Innuendo: Jack Getschman and Cris Galvez discuss this in one of the convention panel videos. Apparently Jack follows the practice of sending his voice actors just their own lines in isolation, rather than the entire script. Well, episode 2 was Cris's debut as Princess Luna—and her only lines were a bit of moaning, then apologizing to Celestia. On first reading this, Cris thought she'd accidentally signed up for a Rule 34 video, and Jack had to reassure her it was nothing of the sort.
• Angst? What Angst?: Spooky Spoon seems surprisingly nonchalant about being dead.
  • Played for Laughs with Scootaloo, who apparently lost all her loved ones and her Cutie Mark in a house fire the day before her first appearance, but is completely fine.
  Scootaloo: It made me who I am.
• Ass Pull:
  • Played for Laughs, of course. Since Princess Luna was absent for most of the first two seasons of the real show, her reappearance in Episode 3 is so unexpected that even Celestia is surprised by it - especially as it implies that she's recovered her former strength and appearance in just a few days. It's then completely glossed over in three lines of dialogue.
  Celestia: You're looking better. The color has come back to you.
  Luna: Yeah, well... I'm not on the moon any more.
  Celestia: Ah yes, of course, yes.
• Awesome Music: Pretty much all the music in this show is good, but note worthy examples include:
  • The show's original opening theme.
  • The new opening theme, created after the hiatus.
  • Also, the music that plays when Twilight realizes how to beat Nightmare Moon. ("Journey" on the soundtrack video.)
  • The music in episode 19, when the Mane Six stand and fight the Diamond Dogs.
• Creator Backlash: In the commentary track for Episode 13, Jack Getschman says he gets the impression that the fandom broadly agrees this is the worst episode of Scootertrix (so far)—and he also agrees with it. He thinks the biggest issues are poor pacing and too many "buffer scenes".
• Crosses the Line Twice: In episode 24, Celestia plans to bombard King Sombra's zombie army with meteors. Horrible deaths... for the already dead. The 'twice' part comes in when she advertises the event and then sells tickets. For families. With small children. And then defends it to Luna by saying that the ponies won't be near the impact site, so they won't see anything other than "pretty, twinkling lights". Which she promptly calls out as a line she should've used in the advertisements.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The "Schlieffenpony Plan" mentioned at the close of episode 12 is a reference to the Schlieffen Plan enacted by Germany in World War I. Germany was facing the same situation that Celestia is in: it had two enemy powers (France and Russia) on opposite fronts, which left it vulnerable to being attacked by both at the same time. Germany's solution was also the same as Apple Bloom's: commit the majority of the German army to a massive, rapid advance to cripple France, then return to face the Russians. The plan failed because Germany was unable to make the decisive strike against France that the operation hinged upon.
  • In a war report, Scootaloo says "Our soldiers can't take the cold of the North". This is likely a reference to the infamously harsh Russian Winter, which caused the failure of many military campaigns against Russia.
  • In Episode 22, Celestia recounts her battle on the "plains of the Ardennes", in which she killed thirty thousand of Sombra's zombie forces. This is almost certainly a reference to the Battle of the Ardennes, one of the opening battles of World War I, in which Germany defeated France.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Episode 7 reveals that Celestia has two stained glass windows of Nightmare Moon getting defeated with Elements of Harmony (once by the mane six, and once by Celestia), and she set them up where Luna can't help but see them every time she goes to eat. When Luna points out how demoralizing it is to have reminders of her past failure rubbed in her face every day like this, Celestia insists that it's Luna's fault for getting defeated by the Elements in the first place. Revelations from episode 26 (that the story about Celestia defeating and banishing Nightmare Moon was a complete lie, and it was actually Celestia's fault that Luna became Nightmare Moon at all) retroactively make Celestia even more of a jerk in this scene.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In episode 15, Pinkie's speech about free will becomes even more powerful (and meta) with the knowledge that something similar happened to her behind the scenes—namely, her compassion towards Rarity convinced the creator to scrap her initial villain characterization.
  • In episode 10, Celestia refuses to teach Luna her secrets about governing, and her only explanation for the refusal is, "I don't give ponies what they want. I give them what they need." In light of the big reveal from episode 26, Celestia sincerely meant that Luna already knows how to lead better than she does; she just couldn't help but say so in a backhanded way.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Mane Six question Fluttershy's constant use of the word "man", a full month before the actual show would make a similar joke in the hundredth episode, "Slice of Life".
  • In episode 18, the show makes a deliberately cringeworthy "scooter tricks" pun as an intentional Title Drop. However, by complete coincidence, the abridged series Ultra Fast Pony made this exact same joke only days before episode 18 was released, as a friendly jab at Scootertrix.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • "Trixie the Abridged" unexpectedly sees the characters teleported to a barren wasteland that used to be another abridged series. Specifically, it's My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural. Pinkie explains that Cameraderie had a subplot about Doctor Whooves and (their version of) Pinkie time-traveling to prevent an alien invasion from destroying Equestria. But the series ended before that subplot could ever be resolved, so Equestria wasn't saved.
  • The Movie retcons that to make it either less horrifying or even worse, depending on your perspective. Pinkie and Doctor Whooves did eventually save Equestria—but it took them 493 tries. In the Camaraderie universe, time travel follows branching timeline rules, so those 492 timelines where Pinkie and Whooves failed to save Equestria are still out there in the multiverse. This also means the barren wasteland shown in "Trixie the Abridged" was one of those failed timelines, not the "main" Camaraderie universe.
• Nightmare Fuel: The post-credits scene in episode 24, where some unknown being steals Pinkie's ability to break the Fourth Wall.
• Nightmare Retardant: In-Universe. In episode 17, Fluttershy is initially unafraid of the cockatrice due to its ridiculous appearance.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: It's unclear how successful he was, but Getschman has said in various livestreams and episode commentaries that he was attempting to rescue Flash Sentry by portraying him as The Ace and Apple Bloom's rival. He doesn't like human Flash any more than the rest of the fanbase—but he wants to remind everyone that pony Flash is a separate character, and one who's mostly a blank slate in canon with a few intriguing details (like the fact he's in the Crystal Empire's Royal Guard, even though he's a pegasus) just ripe for fan theories.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Scootertrix doesn't introduce original plots until episode 4, and the first few episodes aren't as funny as later ones, making for a rough beginning to the series. Episode 1 in particular is literally slower-paced than the rest of the series, due to a lot of awkward pauses in dialogue (which Jack Getschman admits he added just to pad the episode out to the proper length). In the commentary track for episode 2 Getschman jokes that there's no reason to watch episode 1 at all: all the actually relevant info is recapped in episode 2's Previously on… montage, and it's better-paced, to boot.
• Ugly Cute: Rarity as a juvenile changeling, as shown in the flashback in episode 14.
• The Woobie:
  • Rarity is a changeling who had to defect to Equestria, due to her own species intolerance to her artistic mind. Only for Equestria to force her into being The Mole, to her own race.
  • Luna was imprisoned on the moon for one thousand years, only for no one to even recognize her when she came back. She also has to deal with her Jerkass sister, Celestia who constantly makes selfish, reckless, and irresponsible decisions regarding the protection of their subjects, only for herself, to be constantly proven wrong, while Celestia is constantly rewarded with success.
• Woolseyism: In episode 7, Fluttershy's habit of adding "man" to the end of her sentences leads the rest of the protagonists to wonder what a "man" even is. Applejack thinks it's a kind of bread, confusing it with naan, while The Bird^note Rainbow Dash guesses it may be short for "manticore." The Spanish subtitles change the tic to "tía" (literally "aunt" but also used as slang for "woman" in Spain, like the English word "chick") and alters the others' comments accordingly: Applejack now asks whether Fluttershy thinks she's someone's niece, while The Bird stresses the middle part of "mantícora" to make "man-tía-cora." Similarly, the Russian subtitles change "manticore" to "chupacabra" and "naan bread" to "onion bread" in order to make the pun work.