The cast of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a very complex dynamic, with all of the main six ponies having each trait to be foils to each other.
- Applejack and Rarity are a Tomboy and Girly Girl pair, and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are occasionally paired similarly.
- Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie share a strong friendship thanks to their mutual hedonistic, sometimes-mischievous natures despite the fact that Rainbow is more liable than perhaps any of the other characters to be annoyed by Pinkie's behavior.
- Twilight and Pinkie can act as foils for (or be foiled by) any of the other characters because they're both "outsiders" - Twilight because she's the protagonist who often serves as the lone, sane commentator to everything that happens, and Pinkie Pie because she really is inscrutably crazy.
- It is also seen within the females of the same race. The unicorn duo is the socially awkward hero and the cultured lady, the pegasus duo is the wall flower and the braggart, and the earth pony duo are the cloud cuckoo lander and the down to earth pony.
- Most of the ponies have pets that act as be foils to them.
- Introverted Fluttershy's aggressive Angel often pushes her beyond her (very small) comfort zone.
- Ladylike Rarity owns a grumpy cat named Opalescence. (If you had a name like that, you'd have a poor attitude, too.)
- The hyperactive and easily-excitable Pinkie Pie has Gummy, a baby alligator whose sole personality trait is to pay no heed to anything happening around him. Pinkie, oblivious, has been known to project her own concerns onto Gummy and hold serious conversations with him.
- Twilight's owl, Owlowicious, is not a foil for herself, but rather for Spike, who is himself a foil for Twilight.
- As of Season 2, the high-flying speedster Rainbow Dash has acquired a pet tortoise (not turtle) named Tank.
- P The level-headed Applejack has Winona the dog who, well, acts like your typical hyperactive dog.
- Finally, you notice it in a few of the oneshot rivals and such that have appeared.
- Twilight, who is afraid of others perceiving her as arrogant due to her magical prowess, inadvertently found a rival in Trixie, who likes to outshine everyone despite being an entirely average practitioner of magic.
- The less-than-confident Fluttershy found hers in her one-time mentor Iron Will, an overly aggressive minotaur.
- Rainbow Dash, the very Element of Loyalty, had a foil in Lightning Dust, who tends to be self-serving and doesn't care who she hurts. The contrast is only highlighted in that other than this, they're nearly identical. Gilda the griffon is a milder version of the same theme, an arrogant flier with even more jerk and less heart of gold than Rainbow.
- The ever so honest Applejack and her family, who value quality over quantity and have a strong sense of integrity, found foils in the conniving, selfish, cheating Flim and Flam.
- On the one hand, we have Rarity, the Element of Generosity, who sometimes frets over the possibility that she might actually be better off being not quite so generous. On the other, we have Suri Polomare, who has absolutely no problem taking credit for someone else’s work or taking others for granted.
- Twilight Sparkle gains a foil in the Season 5 premiere "The Cutie Map" in Starlight Glimmer. Both are Obsessively Organized leaders of their respective towns and powerful magic users, but Twilight mostly leaves everyday life and affairs to the older and wiser Mayor of Ponyville, stepping in when there's a major catastrophe, and her OCD is limited and (mostly) controlled to her personal life, while Starlight's OCD is extreme and controls every single aspect of her town's life. Twilight is the Princess of Friendship and understands that differences (both talent-wise and personality-wise) between ponies can bring them together and even the best of friends have arguments, while Starlight is a dictator over her small town that believes that everypony else needs to be equal and happy all the time and eventually turns out to be a hypocrite as she had kept her cutie mark. Twilight rules out of love, respect, and dedication, and has strong friendships with those who truly love her in return, while Starlight rules out of fear, brainwashing, and imitation and loses the support of her followers once her hypocrisy is revealed.
- "Amending Fences" has Moondancer — not malevolent but opposing all efforts to befriend her, as she ends up in a similar position — who has similarities to Twilight Sparkle if Twilight had stayed where she was and become even more of a grump dedicated only to studying instead of learning the value of friendship. In flashbacks before they diverted, she is mostly a Palette Swap of Twilight, but at the time of the episode, she has subverted the inherent style of the design with uncouth nerdiness.
- Cheerful, hyperactive Pinkie Pie and her calm and less-than-expressive sister Maud are the page image for Sibling Yin-Yang, and for good reason.
- Day Breaker — Celestia's hypothetical Evil Counterpart — is Nightmare Moon's opposite in every villainous sense. Apart from the day-versus-night/light-versus-dark visual contrast, they have diametrically opposite motivations for their evil acts: Luna was twisted into Nightmare Moon by feelings of neglect, jealousy and lack of appreciation, whereas Day Breaker is motivated entirely by an overblown sense of self-satisfaction: in essence, Nightmare Moon fell from grace for having too little self-esteem and being overreliant on others for validation, whereas Day Breaker's theoretical fall came from having, if anything, too much self-esteem and choosing to rely on no-one. Their attitudes in their duel in Starlight's nightmare are also in stark contrast: Nightmare Moon is constantly scowling and angry, while Day Breaker's emotive range seems fixed on mockery, evil laughs and manic grins.
- There are two villains, Discord and Tirek. Both are foils for each other as Discord (the goofy, fun-loving draconequus) and Tirek (the cynical, tyrannical centaur) are chaos bringers with the ability to steal magic from everypony of Equestria.
