Web Video / My Little Pony in a Nutshell

The Mane Six (and Spike) in nutshell form.

"What the hay?"

— Multiple characters

My Little Pony in a Nutshell is a recap/parody series for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic by YouTuber Round Trip and can be found here. It started with My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) and has continued with Seasons 8 and 9 of the series. The characters are represented by stick figures, while the voices are all done by a text-to-speech computer program, with only a few exceptions.^List The cutie map in "The Parent Map", the Tree of Harmony in "The Mean 6" and "What Lies Beneath", parts of Rockhoof's dialogue in "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Garble's poetry in "Sweet and Smoky", and the Dazzlings in Rainbow Rocks. Most of the videos run about 2 minutes each, but those for the movie and some of the episodes run longer.

In March 2019, Round Trip posted an "In a Nutshell" version of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (4:04). Rainbow Rocks got the same treatment in July 2020 (3:36).

He also made the fan-song "Alternate Realities" with an accompanying music video in the same style.

"I trope you":

• The Abridged Series: Condenses a 22-minute show down to 2-3 minutes and packs it full of jokes.
• Adaptation Expansion: Proportionately speaking, at least - In "The Mean 6", mean Fluttershy's insults to the animals take up a larger percentage of the recap than they took up in the episode due to Rule of Funny.
• Adaptation Name Change: Most characters get Parody Names.
  • The Mane Cast: Twilight Sparkle is Twinkle Sprinkle, Applejack is Aple Jack (pronounced with a long A), Pinkie Pie is Pinkie Pink, Fluttershy is Flitterfloosh, Rainbow Dash is Rainbow Dish, Rarity is Rariry, Spike is Speck (occasionally Spice, Spork, or Psike), and Starlight Glimmer is Stoplight.
  • The Princesses: Princess Celestia is Princess Celerystick and Princess Luna is Princess Lunna.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders: Apple Bloom is Aple Blom (pronounced the same as with Aple Jack), Sweetie Belle is Sweetable, and Scootaloo is Scotolo.
  • The Young Six: Ocellus is Ocelot, Silverstream is Livestream, Gallus is Dallas, Sandbar is Sandband (in "Hearth's Warming Club") or Snackbar (in "School Raze"), Smolder is Smodler, and Yona is Yoga.
  • Villains: Cozy Glow is Crazy Glue, Queen Chrysalis is Queen Christmas, Lightning Dust is Thunder Powder, the Flim-Flam brothers are Flip and Flop, Chancellor Neighsay is Chancellor Nasa, Sunset Shimmer is Upset Sugar, King Sombra is King Samba, Grogar is Gregory, Caballeron is Collaboration, Ahuizotl is Axolotl, the Dazzlings are the Dazzles/Dizzles/Duzzles/Doozles, Sonata Dusk is Sinatra, and Tirek's name is mangled in a different way almost every time somepony addresses him. (Tirek actually knows what everyone's show-accurate name is, and the fact that no one uses their real names, especially his, is his Berserk Button.)
  • Other characters: Big McIntosh is Whopper, Sugar Belle is Sugarable, Zecora is Zechariah, Star Swirl is Star Squirrel, Cranky Doodle Donkey is Cranky Dunkley, Autumn Blaze is Audible, Flash Sentry is Flush Central, Shining Armor is Shiny Armadillo, Zephyr Breeze is Zack Febreze, Quibble Pants is Quicken Loans, Clear Sky is Clorox, Wind Sprint is Windex, Garble is Gabriel, Ember is September/November/December, Cousin Goldie Delicious is Aunt Goldelicious, Braeburn is Barnbarn, Granny Smith is Smithy Gran, Mudbriar is Mud Brian, Fancy Pants is Cant See Pants, Cheese Sandwich is Cheesy Cheese, Sans Smirk is Slugworth, Sunburst is Sunburn, Gabby is Gatsby, Octavia is Activia, Dr. Hooves is Dr. Whomst, Spoiled Rich is Corruptingly Affluent, Daring Do is Doing Do, Angel Bunny is Algae, and Canterlot High is Cantelope High.
  • Discord is called "Disco", "This Cord", "Disc Order" and "Disco Ball" by various characters.
  • The Tree of Harmony is one of the only characters to (at least, vocally) refer to anyone by their actual name.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Pinkie calls Mudbriar Larry Lecture, Wally Wikipedia, and Freddy Filibuster.
  • Trixie to Starlight, in "Road to Friendship": "Tonight I will sleep far away from your snowmobile snoring so I don't snap while the snotty snack snob snoozes."
• Aesop Amnesia: At the end of "IRS Phone Scams in a Nutshell", Twilight learns to stop scamming and writes a friendship report about it, but immediately derails that report into yet another IRS scam.
• Affectionate Parody: It's obvious that Round Trip loves the original show.
• Ahem: The Tree of Harmony does this in "The Mean 6".
• Ambidextrous Sprite: All over the place. The most glaring example is Windex, whose "Not Twilight" hat has its text reversed whenever she's facing to the right.
• Animal Talk:
  • In "Fake It 'Til You Make It", the raccoons lines are along the lines of "chikichipichikichip". They even parody the catchphrase saying, "What the chipichikipichikichip".
  • The trend is continued in "She Talks to Angel". Angel Bunny says "hop hop hop", as well as "what the hop" when surprised. Similarly, a snake says "what the hiss", a wolf says "what the howl", and so forth. A lizard rounds it out by saying "Lizards don't say anything".
• Animal Species Accent: Capper, an anthropomorphic cat, tends to add "meow" to his sentences (something he did not do in the original).
• Anti-Humor: At the beginning of "The Maud Couple", Maud simply says, "Joke". Pinkie's reaction? "Haha XD LOLOL".
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • From "School Daze":
    Chancellor Neighsay: Hi, I'm from the EEA.
    Twilight: Oh, no.
    Rainbow Dash: My students are missing.
    Twilight: Oh, no.
    Yona: I keep tripping on my hair.
    Twilight: Ohhh nooo. [said with a closeup and red background]
  • And from "The Break Up Break Down":
    Discord: So what did we learn today?
    Spike: Love is real.
    Sugar Belle: Spying is bad.
    Sweetie Belle: Whopper^note Big Macintosh should learn what a freaking zip code is.
  • And again in "What Lies Beneath":
    Gallus: I have claustrophobia.
    Yona: I have arachnophobia.
    Sandbar: I have disappoint-my-teachers-phobia.
    Smolder: I have kawaiiphobia.
    Silverstream: I have Storm-King-phobia.
    Ocellus: Ew I'm ugly.
• Art Shift: Recaps for "Molt Down" and "Uprooted" feature short segments animated by a guest artist.
• Artistic License – Biology: Not that biological accuracy would be expected of a series like this, but the picture of the lizard used in the recap for "She Talks to Angel" is actually of a salamander. Unusually, this example also doubles as a Genius Bonus, because the character in the original episode was a "fire lizard", and salamanders have often been associated with fire in mythology.
• Backing Away Slowly: Dr. Fauna does this after she calls out Zecora for nearly killing Fluttershy and she responds with "but look at the good news: this time she survived".
• Berserk Button: Tirek gets irritated when everyone insists on using their Parody Names instead of their real ones.
• Blown Across the Room: Every time Pinkie plays the yovidaphone, everyone else goes tumbling.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: "I zap you" was originally Tempest Shadow's catchphrase, but in later episodes, other characters (like Starlight and the Tree of Harmony) also use it before attacking someone with magic.
• Brief Accent Imitation: When Occeleus transforms into Queen Chrysalis in "What Lies Beneath", she is voiced by Chrysalis's text-to-speech voice. Likewise, Chrysalis gains Twilight's text-to-speech voice when she mocks her in "Frenemies". Notably, this did not happen in the original episodes.
• Caption Humor:
  • Every time someone says the word "bold" in "Fake It 'Til You Make It", the captions turn bold.
  • Whenever Big McIntosh speaks, he just says, "Yup" while the captions translate what he's saying.
  • "Yakity-Sax" has the end "thanks for watching" captions shaking as Pinkie plays the yovidaphone in the background.
  • In "A Matter of Principals", Iron Will lampshades the fact that his captions are Impact Font.
    Iron Will: IRON WILL PREFERS IMPACT OVER COMIC SANS
  • In "The Washouts", Spitfire's dialogue is heard as airplane noises, and translated in the caption.
• Catchphrase:
  • "What the hay?" is the catchphrase of pretty much every character native to Equestria. (The human characters in the Equestria Girls-based shorts use "What the human?" instead.
  • "I zap you" for Tempest. Doubles as a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner.
  • "Yay (X)", when a character approves of something.
  • Somebody saying "LOL" (and pronouncing it "loll") instead of doing an Evil Laugh.
  • "Oh no" for Twilight Sparkle when she's in trouble. Lampshaded by Chrysalis when she turns into Twilight to mock her.
  • "Your stupid" for Sunset Shimmer.
  • "u stink" is used by almost everypony in place of insults or when arguing.
• Clip-Art Animation: The raccoons in "Fake It 'Til You Make It" and the parrot pirates in the movie are pictures of real animal heads with stick arms and legs added. Also the cupcakes in the video for "School Daze". The roc in "Molt Down" is a full picture of an eagle. The frog monster in "The End in Friend" is a photo of a frog. Spitfire is also a picture of an airplane with stick legs added ^note which makes sense, as her real-world namesake is a World War II-era fighter plane. The animals in "She Talks to Angel" are also photos with stick limbs (yes, even the snake has stick limbs).
• Cold Open: Every episode has a short scene before the opening credits, but normally it's only a few seconds long.
• Collective Groan: The citizens of Ponyville break out in one at the end of "The Last Crusade", when Scootaloo's father still does not get that his daughter wants to stay in Ponyville even when it was literally spelled out for him.
• Creator Cameo: Round Trip voices Garble's beat poetry in "Sweet and Smoky" and magic-drained Braeburn in "The Summer Sun Setback." He also voices Mudbriar and Iron Will, and according to a Q&A panel his OC is hidden in the crowd that tramples Chancellor Neighsay in "School Raze."
• The Cavalry: In both season finale episodes, "School Raze" and "The Ending of the End", a massive crowd shows up to save the day, consisting of thousands of fan-submitted OCs.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: In "Student Counsel", Starlight's inability to remember what she was supposed to get for the party was due to her being distracted by her job. In the nutshell form, she's suffering from memory loss caused by constant teleporting.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Other species' leaders declare war if the ponies can't find their missing children.
• Doomed by Canon: "Not Giving Away My Voice" is set before the "Sounds of Silence" episode, so it naturally ends with Autumn Blaze failing to convince the other Kirin to regain their voices.
• Downer Ending: "Not Giving Away My Voice" has Autumn Blaze trying to convince her fellow Kirin to regain their voices and speak again through a impassioned song number. She ends up failing in this attempt as they leave during the performance, but still puts on an impressive show.
• Dull Surprise: Because most of the voice acting is done by a text-to-speech program, every line is delivered in a flat monotone, regardless of the situation. When characters scream, it's represented by having them say "Aaaaaaaaa" in their usual monotone.
  • Averted with King Sombra, whose lines are delivered in an accent so thick as to be nearly unintelligible.
  • And again in Rainbow Rocks; Wubcake provides distinctive voices for each of the Dazzlings before they lose their magic at the end, whereupon the text-to-speech program takes over.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Twilight is sometimes referred to as Twilight in the movie (and some later episodes) instead of Twinkle Sprinkle.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Starlight's dad calls her Starbright Nightlight and Stoppity Loppity. Sunburst's mom calls him Sunny Bun.
• Evil Laugh:
  • The cutie map in "The Parent Map".
  • Queen Chrysalis gets a nice "hohohohohoho" whenever she laughs. Which is also a Stealth Pun since she's called Queen Christmas, and the "hohoho" laughter is often associated with Santa Claus.
  • Cozy Glow occasionally says "mwahahahaha" after doing something mischievous.
• Family Theme Naming: Clear Sky and Wind Sprint, mother and daughter, get the Parody Names Clorox and Windex, two cleaning products.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In "Fake It 'Til You Make It", when Rarity is asking a succession of ponies to run her shop, you can see that if Fluttershy didn't accept, Luna would have been next in line.
  • In "A Matter of Principals", the bugbear has "I can't draw" written on it.
• Funny Background Event: In "Non-Compete Clause" while Sandbar and Gallus are announcing the "Field Trip Olympics," Applejack and Rainbow Dash can be seen fighting as they continue their argument over who is winning.
• Fun with Subtitles:
  • In "The Washouts", Spitfire is represented by a photo of a military airplane. Her "dialogue" consists entirely of airplane noises, while the subtitles explain what she's really saying.
  • Whenever Whopper (Big Mac) talks, all we hear is "eyup" while the subtitles show what he's actually saying (which is usually something eloquent).
  • Twice over in "Sounds of Silence". As Audible (Autumn Blaze) sings her song, a psychological explanation scrolls past at high speed. Later, when she returns to save Applejack and Fluttershy as a nirik, her words are displayed and heard backwards.
• Hurricane of Puns: The final fight between Starlight Glimmer and Queen Chrysalis (who is renamed "Queen Christmas") is a non-stop duel of Christmas-related puns.
• Identical Stranger: Both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie mistake Wind Sprint for Twilight Sparkle, as the two of them have exactly the same colors. For the same reason, Wind Sprint wears a hat that says "Not Twilight".
• Jerkass God: In "What Lies Beneath", the Tree of Harmony doesn't take it lightly that the students don't believe in its godly powers, and puts them through deadly trials as a punishment.
• Kill It with Fire: Twilight burns Fluttershy's masks from "Fake It 'Til You Make It".
• Lampshade Hanging: In "Non-Compete Clause":
  Twilight: Go lead a field trip together.
  Applejack and Rainbow Dash: Challenge accepted.
  Twilight: But no competition.
  Applejack and Rainbow Dash: Oh.
  Pinkie: But isn't voting for teacher of the month literally a competition?
  [Beat]
• Last-Second Word Swap:
  • In "The Movie in a Nutshell", Queen Novo is renamed at the last second to Queen Bismuth complete with head swap. Later, she refuses to lend the ponies her transformation pearl (a.k.a. magic gumball) saying it's none of her Bismuth.
  • In "Sounds of Silence", every mention of a nirik is done this way, swapping "kirin" for its mirror image and an audio clip of the word being played backwards. The speaker's face is replaced by its own mirror image as well.
  • In "Molt Down", Zecora swaps out "Just let it go" for "Just let me go" as she is captured by the roc.
  • In "Road to Friendship", when Trixie lies down in front of Hoo'Far, she starts declaring herself "the great and powerful Trixei" [sic], but replaces "Trixei" with "speed bump".
• Literal Metaphor: As Rochoof rambles about his encounter with the Ursa Major in "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", he breaks something following every sentence, represented by photographs of the objects shattering into pieces. After Twilight shows up and asks him "not to break the classroom", a photo of an entire classroom shatters into pieces.
• Lonely Piano Piece: Used as a Running Gag in "The Break Up Break Down".

• Meaningful Name: In "Sounds of Silence", the Parody Name of Autumn Blaze is "Audible", which is very fitting since she's the only audible kirin (as the other kirin don't talk).
• Motor Mouth:
  • Mudbriar, several times in "The Maud Couple".
  • Rockhoof in "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", when he's describing his encounter with the Ursa Major.
  • Mudbriar and Twilight get into an argument this way in "A Trivial Pursuit", rapidly talking over each other about the correct number of oceans in the world.
• No Name Given: Maud's boyfriend in "The Maud Couple". He's eventually named Mud Brian in "Student Counsel".
• The Noseless: Everyone, thanks to the simplistic art style. Lampshaded in "Molt Down" when Spike apologizes for his bad smell.
  "Good thing we don't have noses anyway."
• Non-Standard Character Design: Spitfire is a picture of a World War II plane with legs rather than a standard stick figure pony.
• Oh, Crap!: In "The Maud Couple", when Pinkie sees who Maud's boyfriend is, she trails off mid-sentence.
  Pinkie: What handsome prey have you seduced into your web of love? Who's the handsome hunk? Who's the smexy stallion? Who's the... lucky...
• Omniglot: Applejack and Fluttershy show a degree of this in "Sounds of Silence", introducing themselves to the kirin in Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Navajo, Russian, and Chinese. The kirin get in on the act near the end, answering "OK" in Morse code.
• Only Sane Man: Tirek is the only character to either try to make others say his name right, or point out that they are naming the other characters incorrectly.
• Orphaned Punchline: In "A Trivial Pursuit", we only hear most of the answers, but not the questions. One can only wonder what "Habakkuk" or "All the Single Ladies" were the answer to.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The "School Raze" recap has Neighsay being run over by the crowd of students^note fan-submitted OCs in stick pony form. All 1,546 of them.
    Neighsay: [getting run over] Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I said ouch.
  • The Cold Open of "Student Counsel". Trixie and Starlight try to have a picnic, but Starlight teleports away every few seconds, thus it takes over half a minute for Trixie to say a single sentence to her.
• Overly Long Scream: In "A Horse Shoe-In" Starlight's scream gets cut off by the intro, then when it comes back she's still screaming, which then transitions into the word "Actually" from her next line.
• Painting the Medium:
  • In "She's All Yak" and "2, 4, 6, Greaaat," Yona's stomping shakes the background so much that fringes of black can be seen between its edges and the outline of the viewing window.
  • In "Road to Friendship," the screen contracts to a little square at the center of the window to emphasize how little space Trixie's wagon has when she and Starlight try to sleep in it.
• Palette Swap: As part of the Stylistic Suck, all the ponies have the same body and head shape.
• Parental Obliviousness: In "The Last Crusade", Scootaloo's parents simply cannot fathom the idea that their daughter wants to stay in Ponyville, and just ignore each of her attempts to tell them so.
• Piss-Take Rap:
  • In "The Mean 6", Mean Fluttershy disses a family of birds in rap form...delivered in the usual text-to-speech program.
  • "What Lies Beneath" has a similar one from Silverstream delivered to the Storm King.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In "Horse Play", Princess Celestia's poor delivery of her line is largely down to botched tone. Since that wouldn't work with the text-to-speech program used here, it is changed to butchering the wording (and an "o hai Mark").
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Rainbow Dash: "I. Must. Ride. It. Now." in "Grannies Gone Wild".
  • Tirek gets one in "The Ending of the End" as multiple characters mangle his name: "My. Name. Is. Tirek!".
• Rapid-Fire "No!": From "Non-Compete Clause":
  Twilight: Are you competing?
  Applejack and Rainbow Dash: Nononononononononononononononono... yes.
• Red Filter of Doom: Since the text-to-speech voices always have the same monotone inflection, this trope is used to represent someone shouting or getting angry, complete with close up and shaking screen.
• Repeat After Me: In "School Raze", after being called "Tarmac", "Trebek", "Turtleneck", and "Terrence", Tirek tries to get Pinkie Pie to say his name correctly by having her repeat the letters of his name. It works until he gets to the letter "e", at which point she calls him "Tire".
• Rhymes on a Dime: Rhyming lines based on Twilight's parody name, Twinkle Sprinkle, show up from time to time.
  • In "Sparkle's Seven", Rarity says, "Twinkle Sprinkle is too predictabinkle."
  • In "Common Ground", Rainbow Dash asks, "Twinkle Sprinkle, did you shrinkle?"
  • In "A Trivial Pursuit," upon being teamed up with Twilight, Pinkie says, "Yay, we are team Pinkle Sprinkle."
  • In "Growing Up Is Hard to Do," Apple Bloom says, "We're sorry, Twinkle Sprinkle. I don't know what we were thinkle."
  • In "The Ending of the End," Pinkie Pie says, "U dont need to wory, Twinkle Sprinkle. Friendship makes us invincibinkle."
  • Garble's beat poetry in "Sweet and Smoky" is delivered in rhyme. Zecora is so impressed that she shows up at the very end to ask if she can adopt him.
• Running Gag:
  • Whenever a character is surprised, confused or upset, they'll exclaim "what the hay".
  • Whenever someone uses hostile magic, they announce "i zap you". When someone uses magic to rescue another character, they say "i/we save you".
  • Every time Rainbow Dish declares something to be awesome, a "TM" (trademark) superscript is shown on that word.
  • Characters always start a song with "lets sing", then spin around during the song around a sentence that summarizes the song's message.
  • Tirek being annoyed by everypony using their Parody Names instead of their real names.
• Sarcasm Mode:
  • In "Non-Compete Clause":
    Twilight: Just go take a nature walk. You would never make a competition out of that.
    Applejack and Rainbow Dash: Yeah, it's not like we've ever done that exact thing before.
    Twilight: Yeah, especially not in season 1 episode 13 or anything.
  • In "The End in Friend", when Rarity wonders why her close friends would set her up in a big hoax just to prove a point, Rainbow Dash leans in close and asks "Infuriating, isn't it?".
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: In "Molt Down", Spike literally says "Burp" when he burns his disguise off.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Princess Celestia tells Twilight she no longer needs EEA approval, Chancellor Neighsay says, "What the hay, I'm outta here."
• Series Continuity Error: Lampshaded in "Growing Up Is Hard To Do" by Apple Bloom, who keeps pointing out that the things they cannot do because they are too young are all things they (or other characters of their age) have already done in previous episodes.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: When the kirin regain their ability to speak at the end of "Sounds of Silence", they celebrate by saying multisyllabic words like "bamboozle", "hyperbole" and "parallelogram".
• Shockingly Expensive Bill: At the end of "The Point of No Return", Twilight ends up owing a late fee of well over 28 nonillion bits. That's a 28 followed by thirty zeroes.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the movie, when the ponies are following Capper during (the equivalent of) his musical number, the Meow Mix commercial jingle plays.
  • Queen Novo in the movie is renamed at the last second in the dialog to Queen Bismuth. This is also a reference to Uzo Aduba being the voice of both Bismuth and Queen Novo.
  • The video for "School Daze": "Oh no, evil Sonics...and more Sonics...and more Sonics...& Knuckles."
  • "The Maud Couple" begins and ends with the Seinfeld theme. The background music playing when Pinkie goes to see Starlight in is the Mii channel music from the Nintendo Wii. Pinkie tells Starlight that Maud is dating Sheldon Cooper.
  • During "Grannies Gone Wild", whenever Rainbow Dash thinks about the rollercoaster (and when she and the Golden Horseshoe Girls are actually riding it), "Rollercoaster" plays.
  • Instead of the song Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo sing in "Surf and/or Turf", they sing "The Sound of Music" and "Under the Sea" respectively.
  • When Spike is trying to teach Princess Celestia her line in "Horse Play", after several failures she finally gets it right, only to end the line with "Oh hi, Mark".
  • When Sunburst gets a letter in "The Parent Map", the song "We Just Got A Letter" from Blue's Clues plays.
  • In "Non-Compete Clause" when the bridge Applejack and Rainbow Dash build falls, Stock Footage of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse from 1940 is shown, to the song "Someone Like You".
  • Big McIntosh, whose name is often shortened to Big Mac (also the name for a McDonald's burger), is renamed Whopper (the name for a Burger King burger).
  • In "The Break Up Break Down", Discord tells Big Mac that he should get a waifu and holds up a picture of Kurisu Makise.
  • Just before Spike gets his wings in "Molt Down", there is a text box below him saying, "What? Spike is evolving!" Just like in the Pokémon video game.
  • The song playing during Spike's transformation is Revelation by American Pearl.
  • In "Yakity-Sax", Pinkie plays "Barbie Girl", "It's a Small World", "Friday", "Mah nà mah nà" and "We Like to Party" on her yovidaphone. The yak plays "Caoineadh Cu Chulainn (Lament)" from Riverdance.
  • The end of the "What Lies Beneath" recap is accompanied by Flowey's theme.
  • In "Sounds of Silence", when the kirin regain the ability to speak (as described under Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness), one of them says "fhqwhgads."
  • The credits music for "Father Knows Beast" starts off with the normal credits theme from the show...before it suddenly switches to the Dragon Tales theme.
  • In the "IRS Phone Scams" special, Bright Idea tells Twilight that her credit card number is "42, don't panic, and always know where your towel is".
  • In "Sparkle's Seven", when Applejack pretends to be a country singer, the castle guards call her Reba.
  • Also in "Sparkle's Seven", Rainbow Dash compares Zephyr Breeze to a "Portland Johnny Bravo".
  • In "Going to Seed", the Great Seedling makes the shape of a six-fingered hand out of apples. When the Apple family sees it, the Gravity Falls theme plays. Other Seedling sightings are scored with music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • In "Student Counsel", Starlight's teleportations are accompanied by the sound of a warp pad.
  • In "The Last Laugh", Sans Smirk is renamed Slugworth - which is very appropriate considering that Cheese Sandwich wore a Willy Wonka outfit in the original episode.
• Side Effects Include...: "Molt Down" when Smolder tells Spike what molting entails.
• Significant Double Casting: Aple Jack and Rainbow Dish have the same text-to-speech voice because they share a voice actress (Ashleigh Ball) in the original show. The same is true for Pinkie Pink and Flitterfloosh (Andrea Libman).
• Special Guest: YouTuber Wubcake voices the cutie map, the Tree of Harmony, and the Dazzlings. In "Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Rockhoof is voiced by another YouTuber, M3llowfr0st.
• Spoof Aesop:
  • The ending of "Grannies Gone Wild", when the "Cool Old Ladie's Club" announce their motto.
    Rainbow Dash and the Golden Horseshoes Club: Curse you, Aple Jack!
  • Also "Friendship University".
    Starswirl: Thank you, Twinkle Sprinkle, I won't give second chances anymore.
  • The ending of "The Break Up Break Down" has "Whopper should learn what a freaking zip code is" added to the episode's actual Aesops.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Twilight does this a few times in "Surf and/or Turf" for comedic effect, interrupting conversations just to say, "Hi. Bye."
• Stick Figure Animation: All of the characters are stick figures with ovals for bodies and heads.
• Stylistic Suck: It's a recap series done with stick figures and a text-to-speech program.
• Subverted Catchphrase: The ending of "2, 4, 6, Greaaat" perfectly sets up Rainbow to use the "what the hay" Share Phrase. Instead, evidencing her torment at yet again being the butt of a "moral lesson" delivered by her friends, she utters a simple, desperate "why".
• Sudden Name Change: Sandbar is called "Sandband" in "The Hearth's Warming Club", but "Sandbar" in "What Lies Beneath" and "Snackbar" from "School Raze" onward.
• Synthetic Voice Actor: All characters, except for the cutie map, the Tree of Harmony, Iron Will, Rockhoof, Mudbriar, and Garble when he's reciting his poetry.
• Take That!:
  • Grubber from the movie is renamed Sean Spicer, President Donald Trump's first press secretary.
  • Among the many "scary monsters" imprisoned in Tartarus in "School Raze", we see Hi-5 from The Emoji Movie and Happy, McDonald's (in)famous mascot.
  • In "Going to Seed", Applejack claims that Goldie Delicious is delusional because she watches The History Channel.
• There Was a Door: Played with. Whenever Discord enters/exits a scene, the plain white background pulls apart like a set of sliding doors to expose stars and galaxies beyond.
• Title Drop: Subverted. When Chrysalis tells Cozy Glow and Tirek that they shouldn't be friends, it sounds like she's about to suggest they should be "frenemies"... but instead she says "gangsters".
• Tom the Dark Lord: Equestria's most ancient evil, the powerful Monster Progenitor, is called... Gregory.
• To the Tune of...: In "Frenemies", the villains sing "Gregory's Bell" to the tune of "Jingle Bells".
• Trade Snark: Whenever Rainbow Dash calls something awesome, it's rendered as "awesome™".
• Transformation Sequence: In "Molt Down" when Spike gets his wings.
• Translation: "Yes": Inverted. Whenever Big Mac says something, all we hear is his trademark "Eyup", but the on-screen text translates it as something very eloquent.
• Trash Talk: Mean Fluttershy does this to the birds in "The Mean 6".
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Lampshaded by Twilight in The Movie, who doesn't understand how her friends could come to the rescue without having any kind of vehicle to travel in.
• Unreadable Disclaimer: In "Molt Down", Smolder lists a whole bunch of side effects of molting in rapid-fire style, ending with "...and even death."
• Very Special Episode:
  • "IRS Phone Scams In a Nutshell", while maintaining the series's usual humor, includes warnings directly from the IRS website, stating things that the IRS will never do that most IRS scammers do. The warning page even appears as the background at a couple points, so viewers can see the full list.
  • After a bit of Self-Deprecation, this video launches into a parody of the Equestria Girls Cafeteria Song, with the lyrics made up of tips on staying safe during the Coronavirus Pandemic.
• Villain Song: Beside the canonical ones that appear as snippets, the villains also sing "Gregory's Bell" to the tune of "Jingle Bells" in "Frenemies".
• Voice of the Legion: Rainbow Dash's last line in "The End in Friend" is spoken with a noticeable reverb to accentuate her anger.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: King Sombra speaks with a near-unintelligible accent that sounds like a mishmash of every Eastern European country at once. Caballeron and Ahuizotl don't do much better with their bizarrely thick, vaguely South American accents.
• White Void Room: Much of the series takes place in front of a blank white background, with little or no scenery. Lampshaded in "Father Knows Beast" when Sludge describes Twilight's "beautiful castle"... which we never see. Lampshaded again in "She's All Yak," when Yona laments the "enormous mess" she's made of the dance... none of which is shown.
• Zerg Rush:
  • In "School Raze", Chancellor Neighsay is run over by over 1500 ponies.
  • In "The Ending of the End", Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrysalis are run over by over 2100 individuals; ponies, dragons, changelings, etc.
    Twilight Sparkle: What the hay who invitied the entire unievrse

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yay stinger

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