Though My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is usually lighthearted outside of the season premieres and finales, even normal episodes can get dark sometimes.
- "Lesson Zero", in which Twilight Sparkle goes disturbingly nuts in trying to maintain her perfect track record as Princess Celestia's top student, culminating in her brainwashing the whole town (albeit accidentally as the end result of a Disaster Dominoes), just so she has a problem to solve (and Celestia getting angry at her for the first time in the series).
- "Magic Duel", where The Great And Powerful Trixie, feeling vengeful from her last appearance, uses an Artifact of Doom to become Ponyville's cruel dictator.
- "Do Princesses Dream Of Magic Sheep?" Already starting out as surprisingly action-packed with high stakes for a mid-season episodenote , more like what you'd see in a season premiere, the kicker comes when we find out what the dream demon really is. Luna created it to torture herself for her crimes as Nightmare Moon. In other words, the Tantabus is nothing less than a form of self-harm. Next to that, the fact that creating an Eldritch Abomination that could end the world is well within the princesses' capabilities almost went unnoticed by fans.
- The most infamous example would be "The Mean 6", which focuses mainly on Queen Chrysalis, who makes evil duplicates of Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. What's dark about them is they intervene with the real Mane Six in various situations, and they mistake the clones for their actual friends behaving horribly out of nowhere and almost destroys their friendship. Things go from bad to worse when the evil doubles die. To add up to it, it takes place in a dark environment (the Everfree Forest), and is the thirteenth episode of the season.
