Now the story of six human ponies, who know nothing and the one apple who had no choice but to squash them forever. It's Equestria Girls!
— Opening Narration to Physics
EQUESTRIA GIRLS (yes, the all-caps is intentional; yes, it is mandatory) is a series started by YouTube user ZXInsanity, and expanded upon by users Blarghalt and Jake Whyman. It is, first and foremost, an absurd parody of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Spin-Off of the same name.
As far as parodies go, it's unique in that it predates the movie it's lampooning by four months, when the only information available was a few pieces of concept art, so that's what was used. Also, all the voices are generated by text-to-speech programs. note
Watch them if you dare. And if you still wish to comprehend their curious world, go to this link here.
Tropes:
- Anthropomorphic Food: The apple, while not exactly anthropomorphic, is sentient, as is its arch-enemies, the orange and pear.
- In "A Real Sppoky Day (PART 2)" by SammiFX, a peanut is turned into a living burger, and is then devoured by Sweetie Belle.
- In "A Real Sppoky Day (PART 2)"
- Apocalypse How: Applejack and a giant apple fusing together causes "The Appling", which Pinkie decides she must stop.
- Berserk Button: Don't stand in front of Twilight for five hours and explain in excruciating detail how superior you are to her in every single respect. Trixie learned this the hard way.
- Big Bad: The Reapers, and later The Apples. Then, even later, Hasbro, the Grim Reaper, and Sid Megabus.
- Big Damn Movie: "Day of the Flutter" by MrDeLoop, relatively speaking. In contrast to the standard entries in this "canon" — which run anywhere from 3 seconds to 11 minutes (but usually about a minute or two) and tend to be animated dada comics at best — this one clocks in at a whopping 37 minutes and features an epic battle between godlike forces. It also successfully weaves together many of the disparate plot threads cooked up by each of the individual creators. Oh, it's still a complete Mind Screw, but it's a more coherent one than usual.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Twilight was quite visibly indoctrinated for several episodes. She appears to have gotten better.
- Brick Joke:
- "Guess who just got their driver's license?"
- In "Sweet and Ballet", Celestia and Luna summon The Great One (Shaquille O'Neal's giant floating head). We see him again in "Politics".
- Butt-Monkey:
- Brad.
- Everyone.Except Luna. -ZX
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: What originally started as a one-off comedic parody of a movie that might not have even existed has escalated into 30+ videos with several ongoing Storylines, Character Arcs, and an Interconnecting Continuity by multiple creators.
- Cerebus Syndrome:
- As the series went on, the characters found themselves less often in insane relationship troubles and more often taking part in insane galactic wars with survival of the planet on the line, notably in ZX's "Discord's Awakening"
- "Cosmonaut Quincenera" while still comical, ie slightly darker in tone.
- Played straight and taken further in Blarghalt's follow-up and "Dawn of Shimmer", where Discord dies just after marrying Fluttershy and we get a long scene of Fluttershy standing vigil at his grave. Then Subverted when Fluttershy gets knocked out of frame by a giant Jigglypuff singing Bee Gees music, then Double Subverted when we hear that Chrysalis and her resistance faction are taking orders directly from Lauren Faust.
- And then there's "Salad Funday", which is, well...
- Clip-Art Animation: The main six ponies (plus Trixie) are cutouts of leaked official concept art. Every other Ponyverse character, including those who appear in the actual movies (but whose art was not leaked), is a fanmade vector. Everything else is random clip art and stock backgrounds.Celestia and Luna's vectors were used long before we had any idea of what they looked like in the film. Hence the weirdness. -ZX
- Credits Gag:
- The credits to these videos are nothing but gags. Almost all the videos end with fake credits, usually containing names of celebrities or someone fired.
- One that shows up multiple times, especially in ZX's episodes, is that a person mentioned in one episode's credits will be "Recently Fired" in the next.
- Jake Whyman (who started as a fan of ZXInsanity's videos before making his own) typically works the other two parodists - ZX and Blarghalt - into his credits, inevitably with absurd job titles. Those two in turn have responded in kind.
- Cyborg: Luna is actually a cyborg ninja.
- Depending on the Writer: ZXInsanity usually portrays Twilight as some being of dark energy, or at least just strange and creepy. In other videos, she's either a Cloudcuckoolander or a Ridiculously Average Girl.Twilight was supposed to be a servant of The Reapers indefinitely, but I ran out of ideas/jokes for her and thought it better if she was just the average main character (Well, what passes for average in these things!). -ZX
- The Dragon: "Dawn of Shimmer" reveals Queen Chrysalis is one to Lauren Faust. Their mission: Take down Hasbro.
- Drives Like Crazy: Pinkie Pie
- Fate Worse than Death: Twilight thinks Chrysalis's Horse-O-Ween costume needs work, so she banishes her to The Zone of Eternal Horror. The queen is actually pretty disappointed by what she sees. ...Until Johnny Test starts playing in the background.
- In "Day of the Flutter", being transformed into a statue as a puppet of an Overlord such as Hasbro counts as one.''
- In "Day of the Flutter"
- Fun with Subtitles: In "The Day of the Butter", Drpc100 only speaks in Spanish. All his lines are subtitled—but those are also in Spanish.
- Gainax Ending: It's actually pretty rare for an episode not to end on one.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Applejack is apparently part Gardevoir.
- Halfway Plot Switch: "Politics" starts out with Twilight finding out she's a princess, then joyfully rampaging through Equestria. Afterwards, the story turns its attention to an apple and an orange about to face off in a duel, but are interrupted by Elmo.
- Holy Is Not Safe: In "Day of the Flutter", when Zecora tried to touch the Triforce, her hands were almost burned.
- Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: Both "Spike's Chill Evening" and "Vengeance, Thy Name is Apples" have Spike serve as transportation for Twilight despite being less than half her size.
- In Name Only: You can't get more "In-Name-Only" than this. It has about as much in common with the actual Equestria Girls as the moon has with a banana. Lampshaded further in ZX's "MOVIE ACCURATE REMAKES" of his first two episodes. Aside from using a music clip and the official logo from the actual movie, they have even less to do with it than before.
- Insistent Terminology: Partly to lessen confusion with the actual movie, partly because why not, the supertitle of these videos ("EQUESTRIA GIRLS") is always capitalized.
- Knight of Cerebus: Sunset Shimmer. While not particularly menacing, when she makes her first appearance in "Dawn of Shimmer", the episode starts getting darker.
- Limited Animation: You can't get much more limited than this. The characters "talk" by bouncing up and down, as like a child playing with a toy; their expressions rarely if ever change (in Blarghalt & Jakewhyman's episodes; facial expressions do change in ZX's).The characters' expressions usually change when something dramatic or important is happening. These moments seem to have been happening more and more recently. No idea why. -ZX
- Medium Awareness: Happens a few times over the course of the series. For example, in "Barncoming" when Rarity complains about the absurdly short duration of a montage (literally two seconds), or in "Rainbow Rocks" when Rainbroccoli Dash seems to know they are in a video series.
- Mind Screw: You'll seriously go "What just happened?" after watching these. No, it won't make much (if any) more sense if you watch them multiple times.
- Montage: A two-second one in "Barncoming".
- Non-Indicative Name: The title of "Poverty" implies it will be a Broke Episode. It's not.
- Official Fan-Submitted Content: Invoked. ZX has thus far welcomed others coming in and adding to his "canon". JakeWhyman in particular started making his videos because he was a fan, and quickly became the third member of the creator pantheon. A few fan-made episodes are counted as part of the "complete saga", including one in Spanish.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Vinyl Scratch appears to be a member of one serving as the liaison to the SPORK-COM Project.
- One-Winged Angel: Sunset Shimmer has this weird Cyborg form, and the apple has some kind of form with a nice hat and beefy arms.
- Only Sane Man: Rarity and Fluttershy are probably the most normal of the cast.
- Original Character: Chrysalis has an entire army of them, most of which look like they were made with this creator.
- The Other Darrin:
- Invoked and played with. In "Brag Busters", Bon Bon randomly switches between female and male voices, often in the middle of a line. This is a reference to how her voice in the show is never consistent.
- The three main creators all use different text-to-speech options for the character voices (Applejack, however, is oddly consistent). Even within one creator's episodes, a character's voice may change.
- Vinyl Scratch says she can use whatever voice she wants since she has never been given a speaking role in the show.This is entirely Intentional. We're in contact fairly regularly and could organize the voices out if we wanted. But I don't think organization and planning is really at the heart of this series! -ZX
- Invoked and played with. In "Brag Busters"
- Perky Goth: Fluttershy appears to have become one as of Rainbow Rocks. And boy can she belt out a mean Five Finger Death Punch cover.
- The Quiet One: In "Sweet and Ballet", Applejack's only line is "Apples". In fact, all Applejack ever says is "Apples". On the rare occasion Applejack says something other than "apple", it's O.O.C. Is Serious Business. Usually.
- Robo Speak: Every single character's dialogue is delivered by the text-to-speech programs Acapella, Ivona, and Oddcast. They are not consistent between creators (or even between episodes of a single creator). They may not even be the correct gender.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: Brad is a cutout of a live-action human (usually Nicolas Cage).
- Running Gag: Plenty.
- The only thing Applejack ever says is "Appul".
- Characters regularly fall from the sky for no reason
- ZX and Blarghalt often write their descriptions in all-caps, insisting that the videos are "lost footage" from the movie's production, recovered by some government at massive expense and lives lost. Lampshaded by Jake Whyman (who normally doesn't use all-caps), when he described one of his videos with "CAPSLOCK FOREVER!!!1!!!11!!!!!..."
- The final orchestral stings from Holst's "Mars" are often used to indicate suspense.
- Sealed Evil in a Duel: To the extent that there is a canon, this is the status quo of the series after the events of "The Day of the Flutter". In the "real world", the gods ZXInsanity, Blarghalt, and JakeWhyman are in an evenly-matched, seemingly endless battle with Hasbro, to keep it from destroying the world. Meanwhile, the Equestria Girls have their adventures in a shared dreamscape, completely unaware of what's going on in the real world.
- Shout-Out: In "The Great Appul War: Part 1", Spike says "Any more bright ideas, Einstein?"
- Single-Episode Handicap:
"Hospital Visit", where Twilight and Rarity get their Les Yay on. - Stylistic Suck: Where to even begin?
- The characters are all low quality clipart poorly-masked over static backgrounds who "speak" by moving up and down. Later episodes have them expressing faces or moving their limbs, but they still hop around when they "speak": this is explained in "Day of the Flutter" as the weakening stone seal making it more easier for the Mane Six and Hasbro to develop more complex dreams.
- As mentioned above, all dialogue is given via text-to-speech program.
- In ZX's own words:"Bask in the sheer terrible animation that is the EQUESTRIA GIRLS parody series. [...] There are an overwhelming ton of show-quality fan animations out there in this fan community, and we can assure you this is nothing like any of them."
- Super Mode: The giant apple fused with Applejack has one in "Barncoming". It has a hat and beefy arms. Pinkie Pie also has one: Pinkieshiro. There is also Super Saiyan Gummy.
- Take That!: Primarily to My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, obviously. But it also pokes fun at any number of movies and video games. ZX's "Episode 3" is an extended one to Valve.
- Theme Tune: "Equestria Girls", the infamous parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls". But only 10 seconds of the chorus.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Brad dies or gets hurt a lot.
- Everyone dies or gets hurt a lot.
- This is lampshaded in ZX's first Rainbow Rocks video, when Applejack appears, making a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the Rainbow Rocks. Rainbroccoli Dash asks why AJ keeps dying in these videos. Her tombstone even reads, "Blimey that was quick".
- Throw It In!: Invoked. If one of the three main creators does something the others like, chances are it'll be referenced in the others' videos. Best example is Brad being Nicolas Cage; Jake Whyman came up with the idea and ZXInsanity declared it canon. Or Applejack only saying "Apples", which was Blarghalt's idea (in ZX's early episodes, Applejack did not speak).
- Unexplained Recovery: Spoofed in "Vengeance, Thy Name is Apples". At the end of the episode, JakeWhyman and Blarghalt (or at least their avatars) confront ZX demanding to know why he killed off Applejack. He tells them not to worry, as he's already found a satisfying and logical solution to bring her back. Cue Applejack miraculously poofing back to life with no explanation whatsoever to rapturous applause from the rest of the cast.
- The Unintelligible: Granny Smith, on the rare occasions she has anything to say, "speaks" using audio clips of Scatman John. Also, the giant apple and the Reapers only communicate by odd vibration sounds, though they at least are subtitled.
- Wham Episode:
- "Vengeance, Thy Name is Apples". Applejack actually talks!
- Earlier, "Dawn Of Shimmer". Discord is thought to have been killed, comes back to life and takes out Sunset via Heroic Sacrifice. Then, an audio-only clip at the end has Chrysalis reveal she's been working for Lauren Faust.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Various one-off characters, some of which would have affected Equestria's history greatly, such as Superbad Steve.
- World of Weirdness: And HOW.
