Billing Displacement: Despite Sunset being the main focus for "Mirror Magic", Rebecca Shoichet is the last of the Rainbooms' voice actors billed in the credits. The same applies for "Dance Magic" and "Movie Magic" crediting Shoichet as the last of the Rainbooms' voice actors (and for the latter, also below Cathy Weseluck as Spike) despite the previous twofilms billing her second after Tara Strong.
Sunny Flare's face weirdly cycles between facial expressions for a brief moment, when Sour Sweet claims that they're about to submit their video.
There's a tiny mistake in the Shadowbolts' dialog at the dinner: before Rarity approaches them, Sugarcoat emphasizes that the Rainbooms are a band and likely have a song already and they (the Shadowbolts) don't, but Sour Sweet insists that there's still a chance for them to write one; Sunny Flare then tells her "Face it, Sour. We're doomed." When Rarity approaches and admits to overhearing them, Sugarcoat says: "Like I said. Doomed."
Right at the end of the girls' music video (during the final line of the song, as the camera pans away from Rarity's and Sour Sweet's faces) one can see that Rarity has her left human ear along with her pony one. This error persists during the entire pan.
Blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but during that same zoom out, Sunset Shimmer briefly holds a disembodied duplicate of Sugarcoat's hand. However, Sugarcoat's intact hand and arm are in the same shot; the animation glitch gets fixed when Sugarcoat extends herself into her final pose (yes, holding Sunset's hand). The animators apparently got confused about whenever or not they were already holding hands.
Fluttershy's wings appear and disappear all through the entire duration of the music video, visible when the camera lingers on her, but otherwise gone when part of the background group shots.
Sunny Flare's face has this happen again in the final scene of the special, when Applejack and Lemon Zest express their delight at winning. She keeps opening and closing her mouth in a rather unnatural manner and at one point her eyes randomly bug out for a few frames.
In "Mirror Magic", upon being sucked into the mirror, Fluttershy loses her butterfly hairpin. Although it's mostly missing in the mirror world scenes, there are a few shots where it's back.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The specials are not easy to find these days, as Netflix removed them on October 1, 2022, Discovery Family hasn't aired them since the summer of 2022, Shout! Factory discontinued the Magical Movie Night DVD, and you can no longer purchase the specials on digital.
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The Japanese dub of the main series ended with season 2 while the Japanese dub of Equestria Girls is still ongoing. The result is that Starlight Glimmer, who was introduced in season 5, made her Japanese debut in Mirror Magic instead. This, of course, leaves Japanese audiences with no context when she brings up her misdeeds from "CutieMap".
Novelization First: The novelization was released 17 days before the specials' debut on Discovery Family.
Out of Order: In the UK, when shown on Tiny Pop, Mirror Magic is aired before Movie Magic.
Short Run in Peru: Three countries and one entire region got to see all or some of the specials before they officially aired on Discovery Family. For reference: The three specials were broadcast on Discovery Family on June 24th, July 1st and July 8th (one per day, in the order of "Dance", "Movie" and "Mirror").
The first and most severe case was the Polish airdates for the three specials: May 14th, 21st and 28th. That's forty days earlier in all cases; even better/worse, the American airdates were officially announced on May 26th — when two of the specials had already debuted in Poland.
Somewhat less severe, Discovery Kids México aired the specials eight days before their respective debuts on Discovery Family.
And Discovery Kids Brasil — not being the first time this happens — aired each special just a day after Mexico did, an exact week before Discovery Family.
And Discovery Kids Latinoamérica aired them all on July 3rd in a single 60-minute block. The first two specials already aired at this time in Discovery Family, but "Mirror Magic" debuts five days earlier.
The New York Toy Fair 2017 managed to avert the trope for once: it showed a lot of upcoming Equestria Girls merch (including those that turned out to be about the specials), but didn't make references to the specials specifically and didn't have a spoilerrific Hasbro employee, unlike the last two movies.
A downplayed one, but rather vague synopses of the specials were available in the product description of a then-upcoming, new Equestria Girls book — which turned out to be the novelization. This was made available even before the "Summer 2017" announcement. So, anyone curious enough would know ahead of time that the girls make a music video to get money for Camp Everfree, get involved in movie production hijinks, and Equestrian magic causes trouble again. In particular, there's mention that the girls' will have to use their connections to Equestria, thus vaguely hinting at Starlight's appearance.
More like "spoiled by images buried in the official website's server", but the appearance of new character Juniper Montage and human designs for Daring Donote actually new character Chestnut Magnifico in costume and Starlight Glimmer — and that they'd have some degree of importance in new animated media to get their own character profiles in the website — were known for some ahead of any official release.
"Dance Magic" was written and produced before Legend of Everfree, and would have been about the girls raising funds to attend camp. It was apparently a fairly last-minute decision to have it take place after the film, but only the dialog needed to be modified. This explains why the titular song debuted on the Friendship Games soundtrack, why Twilight's "casual clothes" design was first seen as insert art on a Tie-In Novel, and why the girls didn't have their magic necklaces during the special (although this gets handwaved in "Movie Magic" as the girls not thinking/forgetting to wear them at all times). A remnant of this seems to have made its way into the novelization: Sugarcoat claims it's only been three weeks since the Friendship Games, instead of a few months.
It was envisioned they take place during the events of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), explaining Starlight Glimmer's absence in the latter, but it seems this was never implemented.note Starlight cameos in the movie, which makes it improbable for her to have made it back before the invasion which she would have mentioned otherwise. Starlight says Twilight Sparkle and friends were away to solve a friendship problem while in the movie has them helping with the Friendship Festival. Twilight doesn't mention the invasion once they contacted her. "Mirror Magic" takes place before Forgotten Friendship which takes place before the movie since it used the old throne room design.
The specials were originally stated to debut on Netflix in Summer 2017, but this never came to be — the specials debuted on Discovery Family, going straight-to-TV. It wasn't until October 1st that the specials would be released on Netflix, under the collective title of "Tales of Canterlot High".
The novelization is the first of the books to use the new 2017 Equestria Girls logo, which, like the new My Little Pony logo, is modeled after the My Little Pony: The Movie logo.
