So, if you’re a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,
there is a chance you are aware of the many pieces of early concept art,
character designs, or story elements which are a bit different
from what we actually ended up getting in the show.
I made an entire video going over a bunch of these unused things
made during the show’s very early days of production from 2008 to 2010.
The thing about this, however, is that MLP G4 continued on
for almost a whole decade with 9 seasons worth of episodes.
As it turns out,
there is a ton of behind the scenes stuff from the production of the show as a whole
that I simply did not mention.
This includes more concept art, more early designs, more thematic changes,
and even dozens of canceled episodes
which were left on the cutting room floor forever.
So today, I’m going to fix that.
I am going to take a look at everything I just mentioned, and more,
which was made for season 1, all the way to season 9 of MLP: Friendship is Magic.
So without further ado, here is even MORE of the My Little Pony we never got.
To properly kick things off,
I'll be separating the first section of this video into two categories,
the first of which will be dedicated to a bunch of concept art
or sketches from the show.
To start off,
in 2013, Robin Mitchell, an artist who worked on seasons 1 and 2 of MLP,
decided to release well over 100 different images
he drew during his time on the show.
This includes miscellaneous sketches of animals, creatures the ponies encountered,
and articles of clothing like dresses or other accessories to name a few.
I went through every single image he made available,
so here are the most interesting.
There are several sketches which show off designs for characters like the Mane Six,
with notably some dresses we seemingly never saw in the show.
There are a few images showing off this Giant Squid creature,
which was likely the same one who was intended to show up
in the cancelled episode titled “Nothing More to Sea”,
where the Mane Six encounter a giant squid called the Kraken.
There’s this... Weird... sketch of an apple creature who has a mouth,
an early design of Pinkie Pie’s pet alligator, Gummy,
which shows he would’ve walked on two legs at one point,
And a few sketches of Twilight Sparkle’s pet, Owlowiscious.
There are several other downright bizarre sketches here,
like ponies having been turned into bowling ball pins,
a butterfly with slices of bread for wings, and these slightly off putting balloons.
If I had to guess, these were maybe all intended for a scrapped Discord gag or something.
There are sketches showing off early designs of the Diamond Dogs
we see in the episode "A Dog and Pony Show",
there’s a few different sketches of Spike, including a baby version of him,
and this large version of him that was probably intended
for the "Secret of my Excess" episode,
this sketch of Pinkie Pie wearing an unused confetti contraption,
and lastly this rendition of the MLP: Friendship is Magic logo drawn by Robin Mitchell,
which obviously ended up going unused.
I actually kinda like it, as it’s quite unique from all other My Little Pony logos,
Especially with how the P in "pony" is quite literally the head of a pony.
Moving on, there are a few more pieces of early material for specifically season 1.
As shown in the official MLP guidebook,
Nightmare Moon originally went through several quite different designs
before we got the one we know.
She had different styles of wings, mane and tail, she had a tiara instead of a helmet at one point,
her helmet used to be shaped like a crescent moon, and she even had a few different cutie mark designs.
Some of these are okay, but it feels like she doesn’t look like a villain in some of them.
The one in the bottom right had a vector made for it though,
and it’s pretty close when compared to the final Nightmare Moon design.
Several years ago back in the late 2010s,
there were several big leaks of behind the scenes material
made during the production of MLP:FiM.
Included in these leaks is a lot of stuff I will be talking about later on in this video,
but it also had many animatics for the show, including this one for the opening theme sequence
which visually doesn’t have any big differences…
...other than this obscure version of the My Little Pony G4 logo that appears at the end.
This was seemingly made sometime in early 2010
as likely a placeholder logo used during production,
and it never saw any actual use outside of that before getting replaced.
Stylistically, it’s the same as the G4 logo we know,
but the Friendship is Magic subtitle s emphasized more,
and Twilight, and for some reason Applejack without her hat,
are also front and center here.
Moving on to concept art for seasons 2 and beyond,
here are a few pieces of art by Robin Mitchell, which show off a quite early version of Discord.
These seemingly were the first ever sketches of him,
dating back to mid 2010,
and you could tell they had a general idea of what he should look like,
but still quite hadn’t figured it out yet.
A few days later though, Lauren Faust and her husband Craig McCracken,
had a drawing session where they came up with the Discord design we eventually got.
His color palette wasn’t fully decided on yet though,
so according to this image, he could’ve potentially ended up being colored orange,
brown, or even white, which is pretty interesting to see.
According to the official Art of Equestria book MLP book,
Queen Chrysalis originally had a few different designs
where she looked more distinctly bug-like, as if she crawled out from under a log.
Rebecca Dart, a character designer for the show,
apparently got a note from Hasbro saying that those designs "weren’t scary enough",
so she went back and redesigned her to look more upright and commanding.
A few incarnations of this redesign, as shown here,
were drawn up before the one we’re familiar with was chosen.
Speaking of the The Art of Equestria book,
there are a few other interesting pieces of concept art to look at here
for the next few seasons.
For the season 3 premiere,
there’s some art here which shows King Sombra in different forms
where he looks more skinny and weak.
And later on in the book for season 5,
some early designs of Starlight Glimmer are also shown.
She had slightly different colored hair,
several other manestyles were drawn and considered,
and she even seemingly had a different cutie mark at one point.
On a related note, according to Jim Miller, a storyboard artist and director for the show,
Starlight Glimmer as a character was initially conceptualized as ‘Aurora Glimmer’.
However, this was later changed
apparently due to Disney having filed a trademark for the name ‘Aurora’,
and Hasbro not wanting any legal problems.
That being said, let’s now cover the second category I mentioned.
A few interesting thematic or overarching ideas for the show that got cut.
At one point when developing season 1,
Lauren Faust had originally envisioned Twilight Sparkle
as eventually graduating from learning all about friendship in Ponyville.
This idea seemingly got so far that even a piece of concept art was made for it,
showing Twilight wearing her graduation dress and cap.
It’s also likely that her graduating
was intended to play a part in a season/series finale of the show.
According to an interview in the official MLP guidebook,
another story idea Lauren had considered for season 1 and 2,
was to give Twilight a type of insecurity complex
due to all the pressure of being Celestia’s student studying in Ponyville.
They ended up kind of touching upon this concept in the episode "Lesson Zero",
but otherwise the idea never fully came to fruition.
Additionally,
here are a few other overarching ideas revealed in this interview.
Princess Luna would’ve originally had, quote, "lingering issues" with Celestia,
and was going to have more appearances in season 1 in general,
with her learning how to feel good about herself despite living in Celestia’s shadow.
However, this never happened because of concerns of a potential pushback from Hasbro
regarding Luna’s ‘darkness’.
And, Faust had also at one point considered making an opposite version to the Elements of Harmony
called the Elements of Discord, which judging from their name,
it can be assumed they were probably at some point meant to be a part of the season 2 premiere
where Discord is introduced.
Aside from this interview, in numerous comments and anecdotes made by Lauren Faust over the years,
it’s clear that after she left the show during the production of season 2 for creative reasons,
Hasbro decided to make a few changes to ideas she outlined for the future of MLP G4.
A good example of this is how initially,
Princess Cadance was conceptualized as just a unicorn and not an alicorn.
However,
sometime after Faust was no longer involved with the show,
someone else made the decision to give her a pair of wings.
Furthermore,
Lauren Faust also never intended for Twilight to become an alicorn
during her time on the show.
The plans she made seemingly only included
Twilight becoming specifically just a princess at the end of season 3,
and nothing else.
The show certainly would’ve been quite different if these overarching ideas weren’t changed.
That being said,
I think now is a good time for the second portion of this video.
The many cancelled, scrapped, and rejected episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,
the ones which were never meant to see the light of day.
For context, most of what I’ll talk about here was either leaked online years ago,
or revealed by people who worked on the show.
And for the sake of clarity,
something you will quickly notice about these cancelled episodes
is how short and kinda vague they seem.
This is because almost all of them were rejected
long before any type of actual full scripts could be written.
What I’ll be looking at was only ever meant to pitch and convey
the general ideas and themes of the episodes, so don’t expect anything super in depth.
To start off,
the first of many cancelled, or in this case, early versions of episodes
was this one from season 1 titled “A Date to Dance”.
It would’ve been about Big Mac, who for context used to be named Big Apple,
somehow getting two tickets to attend the Grand Galloping Gala in Canterlot.
Despite Applejack telling them not to,
all 5 of the rest of the Mane Six attempt to ask out her brother on a date
so they can go to the gala.
Applejack then gets into a bunch of hijinks trying to stop them from getting close to Big Mac.
As far as I can tell, this was the predecessor to the episode “Ticket Master”
And I can understand why the whole "Big Mac" aspect of it was scrapped,
as it feels kind of out of place for the characters here.
Next, here is an episode titled “Label Pains”,
which would’ve followed Princess Celestia telling the Mane Six
to take over the construction of a dam used for Canterlot’s water supply.
The original team assigned to it, consisting of half beaver, half ogre creatures called ‘Beavorcs’,
are doing a quote “crappy job”.
The Beavorcs don’t really like the ponies telling them what to do,
and effectively try to sabotage the efforts of the Mane Six,
putting the city of Canterlot in danger of being flooded.
The Mane Six prove themselves and save the day, and the Beavorcs learn to not judge others.
It seems like this episode would’ve leaned into Lauren Faust’s vision
of having more adventure themed episodes
where the main characters went out and encountered new creatures
while learning lessons.
This aspect of the show was largely cut out though,
mostly because of the tight production schedule and budget.
In my original My Little Pony We Never Got video,
I briefly mentioned a cancelled episode titled “Fancy Meeting You Deer”,
which only had a vague description
about the Mane Six finding a pony in the forest who thinks he’s a deer.
Well,
I found the actual full outline for the episode which goes into a lot more detail.
It would’ve followed a few of the main characters finding a tribe of deer in a forest
while trying to find a cure to an illness Spike has.
Among the tribe, however,
is a deer called Shambi, who isn’t actually a deer, but rather a pony who doesn’t have a cutie mark
and was adopted by the tribe at a young age.
The ponies notice his antlers are actually just sticks tied to his head,
and it becomes evident that all the deer in the tribe are actively lying to Shambi about him being a deer,
as he truly believes he legit is one.
He eventually discovers the truth, and feels like he doesn’t belong with the tribe anymore,
so he goes to Ponyville with the ponies.
While in town,
Shambi notices they are treating Spike’s sickness in the wrong way and corrects them,
instantly making him feel better.
The tribe of deer come into Ponyville to try to convince Shambi to come back,
and he initially refuses, but then he suddenly earns his cutie mark, a feather,
which in the tribe apparently symbolizes a young deer finding their purpose.
He has a special talent in identifying poisonous things,
so he takes this as a sign the tribe needs him.
He returns with the deer,
and the episode ends with the lesson that wherever you can find friendship and community
is where you belong.
What I find most interesting about this
is how we eventually did get actual deer designs in MLP G4 years later in 2018,
but it feels like the original vision for them as outlined here was quite different.
If you didn’t know,
it’s a somewhat commonly known piece of trivia that who would later become the character Trixie
was actually conceptualized as a male pony.
This is a fact which has been confirmed by people like Lauren Faust herself.
Well, I managed to find the original premise for the episode Trixie is introduced in,
"Boast Busters", where she was a stallion.
One day, a boy unicorn from a neighboring village visits Ponyville.
He annoyingly hypes himself up as the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria
and challenges the townsponies,
but Twilight, being humble, doesn’t want to get involved.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash are beaten by the unicorn in a challenge,
and in contrast to what happens in Boast Busters, the unicorn is so full of himself
that he starts antagonizing ponies who never wanted to compete.
He out parties Pinkie Pie, out sparkles Rarity, and even out cares Fluttershy.
This causes Twilight to reluctantly accept his magic challenge,
where she puts him in his place by defeating him.
It’s quite interesting to see
that an alternate version of Boast Busters with this iteration of Trixie exists.
Fun fact, one of the show’s writers, Chris Savino, was apparently the one who saw this premise,
and suggested to Lauren Faust that Trixie be turned into a female character.
To start off with the season 2 episodes, here’s a premise for one titled “Jewel Thieves”.
Twilight Sparkle needs to get an important text in the library archives in Canterlot
so she uses teleportation Jewels Princess Celestia gave her
to instantly travel there,
reluctantly letting Rarity, Fluttershy and Applejack tag along.
The latter 3 have a good time doing things in Canterlot,
and they all later teleport back to Ponyville.
Everything seems fine, until it becomes apparent
that Twilight’s friends are purposely taking advantage of her access to the jewels
by making up excuses to go back to Canterlot so they can buy and do more stuff there.
This culminates in all 4 of them using up Twilight’s supply of jewels
and getting stuck in Canterlot.
Princess Celestia sees them and unexpectedly confronts Twilight about Pinkie Pie
who has apparently been sending Celestia quote “Twitterlike messages”,
such as “Am eating spaghetti and throwing confetti. Hey that rhymes! LOL!!!”.
Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy admit they were taking advantage of Twilight
and apologize,
ot before the episode ends with Celestia casually pointing out
the free teleportation jewel dispenser right behind them.
According to Lauren Faust, in the episode ‘Luna Eclipsed’,
there was originally a scene with Luna inside Rarity’s boutique,
however, it got cut out of the script for time reasons.
I managed to find the outline of this scene, which goes as follows.
Rarity is still busy inside her Carousel boutique making her costume for Nightmare Night,
when Luna and Twilight enter.
Luna wants to have a new look that comes off as less intimidating
and more approachable to the average pony.
Rarity gets super excited over the opportunity to dress up a princess,
and briefly mentions she’s a fan of Luna’s "Goth" look.
She evidently goes a bit overboard though,
as she dresses up Luna in a stereotypical pink princess costume.
Luna doesn’t like it and begins to take it off with her teeth,
when Pinkie Pie suddenly barges in and assumes Luna had just finished gobbling up a princess.
Pinkie screams and runs out the door, as the scene ends.
The next episode was called “Put a Stork in It”.
Pinkie Pie loves her unofficial position as a taste tester at the Sweet Shoppe,
which for context, was just an early name for Sugarcube Corner.
She loves it not only because she gets to eat sweets,
but also because she gets to spend a lot of time with Mrs. Cake
who she sees as a mother figure.
Gradually, however, Mrs. Cake spends less time with her,
because she’s going to have a baby soon.
Pinkie seems to be completely oblivious to this though,
as she believes Mrs. Cake is purposely ignoring her.
So, she runs away for a bit, not before returning with a mail delivery pony
because she doesn’t understand how babies get delivered.
Quote: “Big sisters Rarity and Applejack take her aside to explain”,
and everything turns out fine,
with the friendship lesson being to not immediately jump to big conclusions.
This premise was essentially an early version of the season 2 episode ‘Baby Cakes’,
just with no actual babies and Pinkie seems weirdly naive here.
For pretty much the entirety of Lauren Faust’s time developing and working on MLP:FiM,
she made an effort to purposely avoid
writing any actual serious romance or love story plotlines for the show,
especially any involving the Mane Six characters,
as she believed they were largely overdone and reductive in cartoons for girls.
During the production of season 2, however,
she wrote a short premise for an episode
which would later be turned into ‘Hearts and Hooves Day”.
It was titled simply ‘Valentines Day’,
and was about a Sadie-Hawkins type dance being held in Ponyville
and everybody has dates for it, except for Twilight Sparkle.
That is until she meets Storm Cloud,
an old friend of Rainbow Dash who’s cool and street wise,
and she quickly forms a crush on him.
Twilight tries and fails to impress Storm Cloud by faking acting all tough,
and she thinks she’s messed up her chances with him,
until it’s revealed that he’s also a bookworm just like her.
The main lesson here being that she should’ve just been herself the whole time.
This Valentines Day episode was never actually worked on
beyond this tiny premise,
but it’s still fascinating to know that ideas like these
were indeed thought up and considered,
even by people like Lauren Faust.
I just know for a fact that an episode of the show where Twilight has a big crush
on just some... random guy that’s introduced in the episode itself,
would’ve permanently damaged the psyche of the 2010s brony fandom.
There would’ve been like Twilight becoming an alicorn
levels of backlash and drama in the MLP fandom over this.
So, I think we sorta dodged a bullet here.
The story arc in the season 2 finale, A Canterlot Wedding,
was at one point originally focused on an evil queen, Queen Chrysalis,
having invaded and taken over the Crystal Kingdom with her army of changeling minions.
It would’ve followed Princess Celestia putting Twilight and her friends
up to the task of defeating Queen Chrysalis,
and freeing the crystal ponies from her dark and tyrannical rule.
Most of you can probably tell this sounds an awful lot
like what sorta happens in the season 3 premiere
with King Sombra trying to take over the Crystal Empire,
and that’s because King Sombra did not exist when this plotline was written.
Later on though,
the wedding story arc for A Canterlot Wedding was what replaced this as the season 2 finale,
and instead of scrapping it,
the crystal ponies concept was just turned into the season 3 premiere instead.
King Sombra essentially just took Chrysalis’s spot as the villain here,
along with a few other changes being made
like the Crystal Kingdom getting renamed to the Crystal Empire.
Moving on,
there is a predecessor to the season 3 premiere, which was also made before King Sombra existed.
Shortly after the season 2 finale,
the Mane Six go visit Princess Cadance and Shining Armor in the Crystal Kingdom.
After Queen Chrysalis was defeated, they were appointed the new rulers of the kingdom
and a magical force field was created to keep out the frozen tundra.
Cadance and the Mane Six are all having fun together, until an emissary from Canterlot arrives,
and tells Twilight and her friends
they aren't following the Proper Pony Princess Protocol.
The emissary puts them through some rigorous training
to learn how to "properly" act in Princess Cadance’s presence,
and tea party where everybody is now acting all proper happens,
all while the magical force field around the kingdom
begins to inexplicably shrink,
causing the dangerous frozen tundra to start moving in.
Believing they are to blame, the emissary tells the Mane Six to go home
and they reluctantly start to do so, which only causes the magical force field
to shrink even faster.
Twilight realizes that it must be because Cadance is feeling like she’s being put on a pedestal,
so they all rush back and have fun with Cadance,
which actually works, and the Crystal Kingdom is safe once again.
It’s kind of funny how the big conflict here is essentially just Cadance feeling bad.
The next episode was titled “Rainbowshy and Flutterdash”,
and was intended to take place
shortly after the events of Proper Pony Princess Protocol.
In order to show the crystal ponies they’re nothing like the evil Queen Chrysalis,
Cadance and Shining Armor have decided to host a Crystal Kingdom Faire in the city,
with the Mane Six staying to help out and even participate in some of the festivities.
Rainbow Dash is taking part in a race for a chance to get into the Wonderbolts Academy,
and Fluttershy is participating in a butterfly demonstration.
However, things go wrong when Twilight performs a spell incorrectly,
and they end up with their bodies having been switched.
It’s noted that the crystal ponies are still quite anxious
over the changelings' transforming abilities,
so this means that ‘Rainbow Dash-as-Fluttershy and Fluttershy-as-Rainbow Dash
will have to keep up their appearances to not cause a big scare in the kingdom.
Rainbow Dash-as-Fluttershy takes part in the butterfly demonstration
and eventually impresses the crowd,
while Fluttershy-as-Rainbow Dash is just about to start in the race,
But not before Twilight reverses the two of them back to normal with a spell,
and Rainbow Dash wins the competition.
It ends with the faire being declared a success,
and Rainbow Dash learning to appreciate and respect Fluttershy’s interests more.
This seemingly would’ve been a fairly typical body switch episode
you tend to see in a lot of cartoons,
but it still could’ve been cool to see more of the crystal ponies.
According to a few sources,
the episode “Magic Duel” was originally intended to be a season 2 episode,
but its script got shuffled around
and moved into the production cycle of season 3 instead.
This season 2 version of Magic Duel was more or less the same to what we got,
although it did oddly enough have a subplot
with Rainbow Dash challenging Twilight to a magic duel,
which believe it or not she actually wins,
to prove a point to Twilight that she needs to properly practice the magic she’s learning
in order to beat Trixie.
If you thought the Luna Eclipsed scene with Rarity in it getting cut was disappointing,
how about an entire cancelled episode that focused on the two characters
It was titled ‘Dreamweaver’,
and was about Rarity getting commissioned to design a dress for Celestia,
however, she soon starts having terrible nightmares
which affect her ability to work.
Fortunately, Princess Luna comes to help by encouraging her to face her fears.
The next time Rarity dreams, she does just that,
but Luna then tells her that she also needs to face the fears in her waking life too,
which she believes is Rarity’s fear of failure getting in the way of her success.
Rarity wakes up and hastily finishes the dress,
not before Celestia picks it up and tells her it’s beautiful.
If you aren’t aware,
it’s a somewhat commonly known fun fact that MLP:FiM was at one point going to end at season 3.
Multiple writers and other people who worked on the show at the time
have confirmed that Magical Mystery Cure was indeed initially intended
to be the series finale when it was first outlined.
If it wasn’t for the show becoming such an unexpectedly popular phenomenon
in the way it did,
it almost certainly would’ve not been renewed for a season 4 and beyond.
If you have ever wondered what this original ending was like though,
here’s a snippet from what was going to be the last scene.
There would have been a rendition of the Morning in Ponyville song,
all while there’s a big celebration in Ponyville.
A narrator, most likely Princess Celestia,
says some stuff about Twilight learning about the magic of friendship
and similar to the ending we eventually got in season 9,
it then pulls away to reveal the book from the very first scene of the show,
right before the book cover closes, and we fade to black…
Too bad Hasbro wanted to sell more toys though, amirite?
Moving onto season 4…
...I actually couldn’t find much about season 4.
There’s this one premise called “What Ponies Want"
that was essentially just an early version of the episode Rainbow Falls,
but it honestly isn’t too notable.
And in the season’s finale, Twilight's Kingdom, during the battle sequence with Tirek,
there was a scene where Twilight physically punched him with her hoof.
This stuck around long enough for it to get storyboarded as shown on screen,
but it was scrapped, most likely due to Hasbro objecting to it
and maybe also because it just would’ve looked awkward
compared to the rest of the battle.
Aside from that, there isn’t much else to say about season 4,
Which is okay, because there is a ton to talk about for season 5.
To start off,
there was a scrapped early version of the episode ‘Rarity Investigates’
made by the show writer M.A. Larson.
This early revision was going to be called “Rainbow Confession”,
and it’s a bit unique in the fact that it’s a rare example
of a scrapped version of an episode going so far into development
that it not only had a short premise, but also only an entire fully written script.
For this reason, I won’t go into super detail about everything,
but all you need to know is that it’s essentially a courtroom battle drama version
of Rarity Investigates.
It follows a relatively similar story with Rainbow Dash being framed for a crime
and Rarity proving her innocence.
Rather than being a detective,
Rarity would’ve channeled her inner Saul Goodman by becoming a lawyer instead.
Some of the other miscellaneous differences here
include someone trapping Soarin inside his hotel room
so he would miss the Wonderbolts performance
being what Rainbow Dash was framed for instead of leaving a fake note for Spitfire,
Rainbow Dash getting put in an actual jail cell after she’s accused of the crime,
Rarity interacting with several unused characters
like a detective named Flat Foot and a court prosecutor named Haybe S. Corpus,
and it was going to be revealed
that none other than Lightning Dust was the one behind it all.
Later on, Lightning Dust was replaced with an old former Wonderbolt named Wind Shear,
who then in turn later evolved into Wind Rider.
As for why this version of Rarity Investigates was cut,
I think it’s mostly due to Hasbro believing most kids watching MLP
probably wouldn’t find a courtroom drama episode to be all that interesting.
As a result,
the script was rejected and sent back to be reworked by a different writer,
Meghan McCarthy,
and she changed it to lean a lot more into the Rarity investigating things aspect,
which I think was for the best.
In an episode titled “Prism Break”, believe it or not,
but the “Rainbow Factory” actually would’ve been made canon.
Okay, for clarity’s sake,
it obviously in no way would’ve been the same grimdark and gorey version of the Rainbow Factory
that became popular in the brony fandom.
But I think it’s likely the person who came up with this
was at least somewhat aware of what the "Rainbow Factory" meant in the MLP fandom.
The episode was about Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash getting called by the Cutie Map
to solve a friendship problem over in Cloudsdale.
The problem being
that the two ponies who head the production of rainbows at the city’s rainbow factory,
Vapor Tail and Foal Spectrum, aren’t getting along.
As a result of this, the production of new rainbows later in the episode gets so low
that the entirety of Cloudsdale begins to sink,
so Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy have to save the city.
It ends with Vapor Tail and Foal Spectrum
learning how their different personalities and departments in the factory
are supposed to work together in tandem.
I imagine the MLP fandom’s reaction
to something like Rainbow Factory seemingly getting referenced in the show itself
certainly would’ve been funny to see.
The next episode is actually another one that takes place in Cloudsdale.
It was titled ‘Griffon Chore’,
and the gist of it is that Fluttershy gets called by the Cutie Map
to solve a friendship problem in the city, and Twilight and Rainbow Dash decide to tag along.
The friendship problem in question
is actually a bunch of Griffons infringing upon the city’s airspace borders.
Their grumpy leader, a griffon named Gregor, who is also revealed the father of Gilda,
refuses to move the griffons out of Cloudsdale when asked nicely by Fluttershy.
So Rainbow Dash abrasively recommends that they just call in the Wonderbolts
to remove them with force.
Fluttershy comes up with her own plan though,
which includes giving Gregor his favorite chocolate dessert,
which works in making him more willing to cooperate.
It then ends with the griffons moving out of Cloudsdale’s airspace,
and Rainbow Dash apologizing to Fluttershy for doubting her.
This premise was seemingly replaced by the season 5 griffon related episode we did get,
The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone.
The episode Slice of Life,
the one where all the most iconic background ponies are now the main focus,
went through quite a lot of changes, as in a bit more than the average episode.
It initially began development under the name “The Other Mane Six”,
with a premise written by Amy Keating Rogers.
It follows the background ponies Octavia, DJ Pon3, Lyra, Bonbon, and Derpy
all getting ready for the Grand Galloping Gala,
so they come to Rarity to have her make dresses for them.
A problem arises though
when all of them repeatedly ask for the exact same dress as the others.
Rarity individually urges them to choose different designs, but they all refuse.
This culminates in them noticing they all have the same dress,
and they get into a big argument.
Twilight Sparkle then appears out of nowhere
to remind them that their friendship is more important than a silly dress,
so they all make up.
Throughout all of this,
Dr. Hooves is also repeatedly trying on a bunch of suits to wear to the Gala
which are all just a bunch of references to the different doctors from Dr. Who.
He settles on the outfit of the Tenth Doctor,
and at the end he stumbles into the pony Rose and introduces himself.
After this premise was written, a different writer, M.A. Larson, soon began to work on it instead.
It picked up the title "Slice of Life", and was revised into something a lot more familiar,
albeit it’s still pretty different in a lot of ways.
It starts off with a scene of Derpy
picking up Cranky and Matilda’s custom made wedding ring from the Diamond Dogs
and the rest of the episode mostly follows Derpy
as she goes around Ponyville interacting with other background ponies
and miscellaneous characters preparing for the wedding.
A few highlights include a scene with Celestia, Luna, and Cadance
having a day at the spa while they have a meta conversation
on how things only ever go wrong when there’s a big event,
a short scene where Twilight suddenly has crossed eyes
and Derpy fixes them by... whacking her on the head,
a scene where a bunch of background ponies
accidentally run into their recolored pony counterparts
and awkwardly stare at each other,
and bizarrely enough,
a scene where it’s revealed Dr. Hooves and Derpy were actually going to be siblings.
Personally, I have a good feeling this detail was cut out of the episode
most likely because it was realized by either Hasbro or the writers,
that the countless number of already existing fanart or fanfictions made
shipping the two characters would all immediately become super weird.
This ship was one of the most popular in the brony fandom at the time,
so they definitely knew something like this could’ve caused a big backlash from fans.
Anyways though,
according to M.A. Larson in a few interviews, some other details which were cut from the episode
include Vinyl Scratch actually talking at one point,
but Hasbro noticed and told him to specifically make her a mute character,
Octavia would’ve had a cello duel with King Sombra,
there was a scene where Flash Sentry asked Cranky why nobody liked him,
and at one point, the episode ended with the Mane Six hugging outside the wedding,
before the camera comically panned over to the sunset
where an army of Changelings are seen flying towards Ponyville.
There was a premise and outline for a cancelled episode called “How to be a Princess”.
It would have focused on the Mane Six going to Canterlot
to attend a type of Princess themed convention,
where ponies sell merch and cosplay
as their favorite past or present princesses from Equestria.
It’s through this that it would’ve been revealed there were potentially dozens of other Princesses
who ruled over Equestria prior to Celestia and Luna.
There is a Princess cosplay pageant at the event
where ponies compete to show how their princess is the best.
Twilight Sparkle notices that only one pony in the competition chose to be her,
but the pony in question, named Pretty Sweet,
seems to have the complete wrong idea of who Twilight is.
She portrays her as a stereotypical princess obsessed with tiaras, tea parties, and ball gowns.
Twilight fails to convince Pretty Sweet on what she’s actually like,
as she doesn’t believe she’s the real Twilight.
Meanwhile, for the episode’s B plot,
the rest of the Mane Six are getting ready for the competition,
when they discover Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy’s costumes
have been accidentally swapped.
Rainbow Dash is forced to be a more girly and calm princess
who loves taking care of bunnies,
and Fluttershy is forced to act as a tough tomboyish warrior princess.
They both struggle, but eventually get the hang of it
and learn to appreciate each other’s princesses.
During this, much to the annoyance of Twilight,
Pretty Sweet scores quite well in the competition as this weird inaccurate version of her.
Shortly before the final round, Twilight finally convinces her that she’s real,
and explains not every Princess is all about tea parties.
Pretty Sweet understands,
but also says she’s just going to drop out of the competition
if that's the case.
The two of them have a nice moment
where Pretty Sweet explains
she now knows Twilight doesn’t love things like tea parties or tiaras,
but she does because it’s a way to spend time with her friends
and to feel beautiful.
Twilight sees her point of view, and tells Pretty Sweet to go out on stage
and be the princess she wants to be.
It then ends with a random filly coming up to Twilight
and being impressed with her accepting Pretty’s idea
of what it means to be a princess.
In an episode titled “Trend or Foe”,
the antagonist from the season 4 episode Rarity Takes Manehattan, Suri Polomare,
would’ve actually returned.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash are helping Rarity out at her Carousel Boutique for the day,
when they discover that Suri Polomare has opened a competing boutique in Ponyville.
Her place is suddenly much more popular than Rarity’s,
so Rainbow Dash and Applejack start doing things
like hiring DJ Pon3 to play music
and slashing the prices of dresses to drive more customers,
all while Rarity herself is completely unaware as she’s busy in the other room.
Rarity finds out and isn't too happy because Hoity Toity is expected to visit soon,
but they manage to fix everything just in time.
It then ends with Suri Polomare being broke and forced to close down her new boutique,
not before vowing revenge and galloping away.
In an early outline for ‘Amending Fences’,
the episode which Moondancer was introduced in,
there are a few interesting differences.
To name a few,
soon after Twilight tries talking to Moondancer at her house,
it’s revealed that she had actually been waiting for Twilight to show up at her party
for over 5 years, with all the decorations still being up,
and she became such a shut-in that she still hasn’t even got her cutie mark.
Additionally,
there was at one point also going to be a scene in the episode
where Twilight goes to Celestia for advice about what she should do about Moondancer.
She says she wants to resign as the Princess of Friendship
as she clearly failed Moondancer as a friend,
but Celestia tells her it’s never too late to repair a friendship.
According to the writer of Amending Fences, M.A. Larson, this scene was cut for time reasons.
Speaking of this guy, M.A. Larson, also said in a 2020 Q&A session
that he once wrote a premise for an episode titled "Mother Country",
which would’ve revealed who the apple siblings' parents were,
or at least who their mom was.
This being a whole two seasons before the season 7 episode, The Perfect Pear.
Apple Bloom starts to wonder what exactly happened to her mom.
So, Applejack tells her the sad story of their mom, a pony named Honeycrisp.
Back when Applejack was a filly, Sweet Apple Acres was struggling to get by,
so Honeycrisp went into the Everfree Forest to find some new kind of apples for the farm.
While there, she came across and rescued a magical creature called a satyr,
who granted her a wish in return.
Honeycrisp wished that everything she touched instantly grew.
She used this ability for the apple trees, and the farm was now flourishing.
However, she realized her mistake when she tried to give Big Mac a hug,
and he had a massive growth spurt, which is and I quote: “why he’s so big now”.
Tortured over how everything she touched grew, Honeycrisp ran away from the farm.
Apple Bloom says she wants to see her mom,
so the two sisters go into the Everfree Forest to find her and reverse the curse.
Larson said that, in hindsight, he was actually glad this episode was rejected by Hasbro.
And I don’t blame him,
it really doesn’t seem anywhere near as good of a heartfelt backstory for Applejack’s parents
as The Perfect Pear was.
There was a version of the season 5 finale,
which was made back when Starlight Glimmer was still named “Aurora Glimmer”.
It would’ve shared some similarities,
with "Aurora" trying to permanently mess up the timeline
still being a key point of contention,
but everything else was different.
Firstly, Starlight would’ve actually been successful
at preventing Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom pretty early on,
which starts to show its consequences fast.
In the main timeline itself, the Mane Six lose their cutie marks,
and everything else they had done up to that point
starts gradually getting undone and reversed in front of them.
This causes the season 4 finale Tirek
to be successful in stealing all the magic in Equestria.
It’s at this point in only part 1 of the finale
that Starlight actually sees her mistake in preventing the rainboom,
and begins to actively help Twilight and her friends
defeat Tirek again.
They fail and he sends them to Tartarus,
but due to timeline shenanigans, the world around them breaks apart
and they find themselves back in Ponyville,
where the plunderseeds from the season 4 opener have taken over again
and Celestia and Luna are both missing.
Part 2 of the finale is dedicated to Twilight attempting to recreate the sonic rainboom,
all while the rest of the Mane Six plus Starlight
have to deal with villains like King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis
suddenly coming back.
They eventually all get their cutie marks back
and it ends with Starlight writing a letter to her new teacher,
Twilight Sparkle.
Interestingly enough, it seems like Sunburst did not exist at this point,
which is why he’s absent here.
Starlight’s only motivation for being a villain was that she, quote,
“never truly experienced the magic of friendship.”,
which is lowkey a very funny excuse for being a villain.
Moving on to season 6, according to the season premiere, The Crystalling,
Flurry Heart was originally going to be named, get this, “Buckey Sparks”.
Furthermore, The Crystalling itself was going to be titled “Off To See the Wizard”
and Sunburst actually existed now,
although he’s referred to here with the name Sunray instead.
Another interesting thing to highlight
is also how it’s hinted at here the lore of alicorns and where exactly they come from
maybe would’ve been explained in more detail at one point
It’s said that Celestia and Luna apparently knew "first hand"
that alicorns can be born as alicorns,
which is in heavy contrast to the actual episode
where they’re both just sort of clueless why Flurry Heart is an alicorn.
I imagine this was cut out most likely because either the writers or Hasbro
didn’t want a big sudden lore dump in the middle of the episode.
There was a premise for an episode titled “Mayor Discord”.
As the name suggests, it follows Discord accidentally being elected mayor of Ponyville
after beating the usually unopposed Mayor Mare by one single point
due to Fluttershy voting for him.
As you would expect,
Discord makes a bunch of chaotic changes in Ponyville
which Twilight Sparkle has to fix,
and he refuses to resign even when things start to fall apart.
Twilight eventually gets him to quit the job
by forcing him to do a bunch of boring stuff like paperwork,
and Mayor Mare gets elected back.
This was shortly after rejected
in favor of another Discord episode idea for season 6.
This next one being that idea in question, this time it was called “Number Fish Fan”.
It would’ve been about Discord finding out at a Twilight Sparkle fan club meeting
that he has a number 1 fan of his very own, a pony named Sweeper Mess.
The two of them start to get along pretty well,
but Sweeper Mess soon makes it clear that he’s actually a much bigger fan of the OG Discord,
before he got reformed.
Sweeper encourages Discord to take a trip down memory lane
by revisiting the scenes of his old chaotic exploits,
and the Mane Six start to become worried
when it looks like Discord imitates his pre-reformed self
to humor his new friend.
They get even more worried when they uncover what appears to be a plan by Discord
to plunge Equestria into chaos once more with Sweeper.
However,
it’s shortly after revealed it was actually just a super convoluted plot by Discord
to teach Sweeper Mess a lesson about friendship.
Similar to Mayor Discord though, this episode idea also got rejected,
and it seems like ‘Dungeons & Discords’ is what eventually took its place in season 6.
Next up, there was an episode titled “Gallop’s Book of Pony Records”,
which would’ve been about the pony equivalent of the Guinness World Records
coming into Ponyville,
and Rainbow Dash getting a bit jealous
over Pinkie Pie setting a bunch of super specific and nonsensical world records.
Rainbow Dash challenges Pinkie to a competition she knows she will win and get a record for,
but it inadvertently leads her into the Everfree Forest
where she encounters a half elephant, half anaconda creature called a Grootslang.
It starts to attack her, but Pinkie Pie helps Rainbow Dash escape,
and the two of them return to Ponyville
only to receive a shared world record for the fastest time escaping from a Grootslang.
Interestingly enough, this Grootslang creature mentioned here
actually did appear in one of the official My Little Pony comics,
which gives a good idea of what it may have looked like in the show.
In a scrapped flashback episode titled “I Know This Much is True”,
it would’ve been revealed Rarity and Applejack were already friends
before they met Twilight Sparkle.
Shortly after Applejack returned from her brief stay in Manehattan as a kid,
she meets Rarity in Ponyville and they start to become friends.
To Rarity’s disappointment, Applejack tells her about how awful she thought Manehattan was
so to not risk damaging their new friendship, Applejack just starts making up a bunch of lies
about the Manehattan fashion scene and its current trends.
Her lies catch up to her when Rarity changes her dress designs
to reflect the completely made up fashion trends,
and she goes to show them to a famous fashion designer in the next town over.
Applejack tries to stop her from making a fool of herself, but it’s too late.
So she confesses she’s responsible and apologizes to Rarity.
The two of them make up,
and it ends with Rarity telling Applejack she didn’t need to lie because she liked her already.
This next one was actually also a flashback episode.
It was titled "Life of Pie", and would’ve been about Pinkie Pie,
shortly after she got her cutie mark as a kid,
deciding to leave her family’s rock farm
to go on a mission of throwing a party for every pony she meets.
She accidentally stumbles into Fluttershy in the Everfree Forest,
who is still chilling with her new animal friends after she got her cutie mark,
so Pinkie tries to throw a party for her.
It doesn’t go well however,
because it’s too loud and uncomfortable for Fluttershy’s liking,
so Pinkie wanders into Ponyville
where she drowns out her sorrows in the Sugarcube Corner.
The Cakes offer her a place to stay, so she tries to throw a party for them too,
but it also doesn’t go well.
Feeling dejected,
Pinkie runs off back into the forest where she meets Fluttershy again.
She gives her some advice
by suggesting she make her parties more personalized for each pony.
And it ends with Pinkie putting the suggestion to good use
by throwing Fluttershy a much more quiet and peaceful party.
Both of these flashback episodes
showing how some of the Mane Six were friends as kids
could’ve been fun to see.
It seems like the first one was reworked and replaced by the episode ‘Where The Apple Lies’,
just with Rarity being absent,
so these ideas didn’t go completely unused.
Moving onto season 7,
here is an outline for an early version of what would become the episode A Royal Problem,
instead called "A Royal Pain in the Map".
Instead of Starlight, it was originally going to be a Twilight focused episode,
with her being called by the Cutie Map to solve a friendship problem
between Princess Celestia and Luna,
which turns out to be just a petty problem.
There wouldn’t have been any cutie mark switching shenanigans here,
and it also would’ve concluded with the royal sisters
unloading all their problems with one another all at once.
But they end their argument by laughing at how ridiculous they’re being,
and thank Twilight for helping them air out their grievances and vent.
In an early revision for the script of Fame and Misfortune,
the ending was going to be slightly different,
with not only Toola Roola and Coconut Cream talking to the Mane Six,
but also numerous other ponies like Cheerilee, Big Mac, and Celestia and Luna.
The townsponies who acted rude to the Mane Six also would’ve actually apologized to them,
right before everybody begins to sing a chorus of the “We’re Not Flawless” song
as the episode ends.
There was an episode titled "Train Tales",
which was going to be about Twilight telling Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity
stories about the Pillars of Equestria while they’re stuck on a train.
This was evidently the predecessor of Campfire Tales,
just with a different setting
and the Cutie Mark Crusaders not being present here.
They were added in when the story was reworked into Twilight being removed,
and their big sisters telling them the stories about the pillars instead.
It also seems like when this was written, one of the Pillars, Flash Magnus,
originally went by the name "Flash Prance" instead.
Next, here is a Daring Do episode titled “What Dash Would Dare to Do”.
Rainbow Dash visits A.K. Yearling, aka Daring Do,
but finds her in a confused state where she can’t remember
what’s happened to her in the last week.
Rainbow Dash helps Daring Do retrace her steps
where it repeatedly looks like she brought destruction everywhere she went.
Which makes Daring start to question
how all her adventures negatively impact other ponies.
They eventually find out
that Daring Do’s memories were actually stolen by an evil minotaur
who used an ancient memory stone to cleanse himself from her memories
so he could get away.
It ends with Rainbow Dash and Daring working together to defeat the minotaur
and get her memories back,
with the lesson being
that sometimes you have to help out and give reassurance
to even the people you look up to.
This was seemingly the spiritual precursor to the season 7 Daring Do episode Daring Done,
with it sharing a few similar plot points and friendship lesson at the end.
Moving on to the final two seasons of MLP:FiM, it gets a bit more interesting,
as we begin to see early ideas
for what would eventually become the last few big story arcs of the show.
According to some pre-production notes made for the season 8 premiere, School Daze,
the Cutie Mark Map would’ve played a more important role
by telling the Mane Six locations in Equestria
where they can find new students or friendship ambassadors
for Twilight’s School of Friendship.
A lot of the premiere was likely intended to have been dedicated
to convincing all these different creatures to come with them to the school.
It’s also mentioned here
that Cozy Glow was at one point intended to be introduced in the premiere itself,
instead of nearly halfway through the season like she was.
Speaking of Cozy Glow,
in numerous other preliminary notes
made during the early stages of production for this season,
Cozy Glow is repeatedly referred to as a he,
which means it can be inferred she was initially conceptualized
as a male character.
Additionally,
it was also suggested a few times here that Cozy Glow should be a non-pony character,
with creatures we saw in the 2017 MLP movie being considered the most.
This in turn would’ve been used as an explanation for why he was a villain in the first place,
as he would’ve never been exposed to the magic of friendship.
Moving on to the season 8 finale
rather than Cozy Glow working alone to sabotage the school of friendship
like she ended up doing,
it would’ve been revealed she was actually working together
with none other than Queen Chrysalis.
Their motivations for working together
were that Cozy wanted to oust Twilight as the Princess of Friendship,
so he could become the powerful Prince of Friendship,
while Chrysalis wanted revenge on Twilight and her friends
by destroying the Cutie Mark Map and taking over her school
to use as a nesting ground for a changeling hive.
How exactly these two characters would’ve ever met
and decided to work together at this much earlier point in the show
was seemingly not thought of yet,
but it still could’ve been cool.
According to some other pre-production notes, this time for the season 9 premiere,
quite a few ideas were cut.
This included the season beginning with a scene showing a future version of Twilight Sparkle,
with the rest of the season meant to show
how she eventually ended up at that point in the future.
There was an idea where The Young Six, who had just saved the day in the season 8 finale,
start to act all arrogant or overconfident, believing they are the "new Mane Six".
This overconfidence results in them trying to talk to the original tree of harmony
in the Everfree Forest,
and the tree itself enveloping and trapping them inside of it.
The Mane Six try to get them out,
but the tree starts to wither and they fear the Young Six will die with the tree.
There would’ve been a whole story arc where Celestia, Luna, and Discord
are feeling the quote "force",
and that their quote "ascension" or "departure" from Equestria is near.
Discord doesn’t want to leave though,
so he makes up a plan to unite all the big villains to prevent his ascension from happening
by wreaking havoc in Equestria.
While disguised as Grogar, he gives what is referred to here
as the "Elements of Disharmony" to the villains.
According to these notes,
Queen Chrysalis would’ve been the Disharmony element of Betrayal, Tirek Greed,
Evil Twilight Sparkle Anti-magic, Grogar/Disguised Discord would be Fear,
King Sombra Cruelty, and Cozy Glow Deceit.
If you’re wondering what this mention of an Evil Twilight Sparkle is,
the writers considered making Twilight, through one way or another,
a temporary antagonist somewhere in season 9,
either in the premiere or during the final few episodes.
But the idea was eventually dropped altogether.
If I had to guess, probably because it was too drastic of a change
to happen to the main protagonist of the show.
Anyways, later on the Mane Six confront and defeat King Sombra
as they do in the season premiere,
which would’ve caused the tree of harmony to revert back to normal
and release the Student Six.
The whole villains having the Elements of Disharmony plot
could’ve been interesting to watch play out,
especially since MLP fans for years had been creating their own interpretations
of what something like this would look like.
Some early ideas for other episodes throughout season 9
also included some of the villains using their Elements of Disharmony
to cause chaos in Equestria.
Speaking of these villains,
the season/series finale, from the battle with the 3 villains,
to what exactly was going to happen in the very last episode,
went through quite a lot of changes during production as well.
In addition to having the Legion of Doom orchestrate an attack on Twilight’s coronation,
Discord also intended for them to do various other schemes
to further weaken harmony in Equestria.
This included Queen Chrysalis and Cozy Glow attacking and sabotaging the main characters.
A good example of this is the episode “Sweet and Smoky”,
which was originally going to be called “Trial by Fire”,
and was about Smolder, Spike, and Fluttershy taking a visit to the Dragonlands.
When all of the sudden,
Queen Chrysalis shows up to invade with the power of her Element of Disharmony
to make the dragons her new subjects.
Another example was in an early version of the episode ‘Growing Up is Hard to do’.
Cozy Glow was apparently going to mistake the grown up versions of the Cutie Mark Crusaders
for their big sisters,
and start to attack them using her Disharmony element.
Perhaps the most interesting cut concept for the finale
tied into the Evil Twilight Sparkle ideas I mentioned.
After the Legion of Doom sabotaged harmony in Equestria
by making the 3 pony tribes distrust one another,
Twilight Sparkle, out of desperation to fix everything,
would've forced everybody in Equestria to get along
by performing some vague spell and transforming into Midnight Sparkle,
a powered up, but antagonistic version of herself
where she is willing to do whatever it takes to make the ponies in Equestria united again.
This included using some quite ruthless tactics
that are described as being similar to Nightmare Moon.
Given that they share the same name,
this pony version of Midnight Sparkle could have shared some similarities design wise
with the Midnight Sparkle we see in the Equestria Girls: Friendship Games movie.
Meanwhile, in a different but kinda similar cut idea for the finale,
Discord was going to turn Twilight evil, by using one of the Elements of Disharmony on her.
Personally, as cool as it could’ve been,
I’m kinda glad they didn’t go with any of these ideas of turning Twilight into an antagonist,
as they feel too out of place for the show in my opinion.
Aside from that, a few other scrapped ideas for the events in the second to last episode,
The Ending of the End,
included the Mane Six
discovering they have apparently always been connected to the essence of harmony
ever since the very beginning,
and they subsequently quote "level up" to become the, and I quote
‘literal embodiment of the gemstone elements’,
whatever that means I guess…
And when they’re in this powered up state, they defeat the Legion of Doom once and for all.
It gets even better though,
(or... maybe worse... Depends on your perspective...)
because after that, they would then somehow pass on their connection to the Elements of Harmony
over to the Young Six student characters as a gift for graduating the School of Friendship.
God, it would’ve been so funny to see the fandom’s reaction to this.
Like the Student Six becoming the new Elements of Harmony
through the equivalent of... graduating high school.
Otherwise, the events of the last episode, The Last Problem,
also went through quite a lot of changes,
with miscellaneous ideas being cut mostly for time reasons.
To start, there apparently would've been a flashback scene
which actually showed Twilight waking up one day and getting all freaked out
when she discovers her body has magically transformed
into the Celestia-recolor one we see in the finale.
The episode itself was also going to be structured a bit differently at one point,
with Luster Dawn either not existing yet or playing less of an important role in the episode.
This ties into maybe the most interesting cut concept
in The Last Problem.
There was originally going to be a scene where none other than Sunset Shimmer
visited Twilight in Canterlot to give her an update
on how things are going in the human world.
It’s here that it was going to be revealed
sometime during the huge jump of time seen in the finale
that Sunset Shimmer actually became the principal of Canterlot High,
and she now has a student council which help her run the school,
who are implied to be the human versions of the Mane Six.
This then inspires Twilight
to establish the Council of Friendship in Equestria with her friends,
so they can all still keep in touch no matter how busy they may be.
So yeah, I guess this scrapped scene with Sunset Shimmer
is about the closest we will ever get to an actual canon ending
for the Equestria Girls universe.
Too bad it got cut though, as Hasbro/the writers
believed it would be too lore heavy for some people watching,
which is fair enough, but at the same time
this was the best opportunity they had to do something like this.
One more interesting thing in The Last Problem I want to highlight
is how in some of the writers notes made for the episode,
there is text alluding to the fact the writers did intentionally try to subtly imply
that Rainbow Dash and Applejack were in fact now a couple in the future.
Additionally,
they also planned at one point
to effectively make the FlutterCord ship officially canon as well,
by having them kiss after Fluttershy walks out of the chaos dimension
when the future Mane Six are meeting up in Canterlot.
This detail was cut out of the episode though, if I had to guess,
most likely because the writers didn’t want to outright confirm
too many ships from the MLP fandom as being canon in the show.
But it’s still fun to know this was indeed considered at one point.
So, I’m now done talking about all the cancelled or early versions of episodes.
Technically, every single episode went through early revisions,
but I think I mentioned all the especially interesting stuff.
Personally, some of my favorites I wish actually got to see the light of day
include “How to be a Princess”,
for its fun theme, the lore about introducing all those new princesses,
and the nice lesson at the end.
And “Number Fish Fan”
because it sounds like an overall pretty fun and memorable Discord episode.
But with that said, I think it’s worth remembering that almost everything I mentioned here
was still either drastically changed into something else
or otherwise completely cut for a reason.
In my opinion, the majority of cancelled episode ideas
vary from being just okay, to feeling a bit boring or repetitive,
or to being downright bad with poorly thought out stories or moral lessons
that don’t really feel like they fit in with the show.
This could reasonably be attributed to the fact these scrapped episodes
inherently don’t have the same level of polish that finished ones do,
but I think some are genuinely just bad.
A perfect example of this is one I didn’t even bother to mention earlier, titled Smothered Brother,
written by Lauren Faust herself.
It’s about Big Macintosh constantly being nagged to do things on the farm
by the rest of his family,
until he leaves for one single day,
and now the women on the farm are unable to do anything without him.
It has this odd kinda reductive message about how they should be thankful to Big Mac
because he’s apparently the sole provider of the farm or something.
Which feels like it would’ve spectacularly gone against a lot of the show’s
original themes and messages about female characters.
The same could also be said about something like Label Pains,
where the Mane Six are trying to prove themselves as capable,
despite the fact we... already know they are from as early as, like,
the very first episode of the show.
The point I’m trying to make
is that maybe it was mostly a positive thing these episodes never came to fruition.
Anyways though, I’m still not fully done here,
because in my research for this video
I found a lot of miscellaneous smaller, albeit still interesting cut ideas or concepts
that I can’t really mention anywhere else,
so I might as well go over them here.
All the way back in 2009,
when the voice actors for the Mane Six characters were getting auditioned and casted into the show,
some alternative voice actors were considered.
The most notable were Shannon Chan-Kent voicing Pinkie Pie instead of Andrea Libman,
and believe it or not, but Kelly Sheridan, the voice actor for Starlight Glimmer,
at one point being seriously considered for Twilight Sparkle.
She apparently did two separate auditions, and for a while was Lauren Faust’s top choice.
The ‘Generosity’ and ‘Honesty’ Elements of Harmony
were originally going to be called ‘Inspiration and ‘Trust’ respectively.
The Elements were also at one point
going to be called the "Elements of Friendship" instead.
The season 2 premiere, The Return of Harmony,
was at one point going to be titled “The Seeds of Chaos” instead.
Additionally,
it also seems that it had initially started out development as a direct to DVD special
instead of being a part of the show itself.
As far as I can tell, this was seemingly because Lauren Faust didn’t know for a while
if MLP:FiM would actually get renewed for a second season or not.
In the Daring Do parts of the episode ‘Read it and Weep’,
there was going to be a two-headed ghost dog creature Daring Do encountered,
but it was seemingly scrapped because of time constraints.
Oddly enough, an asset showing off the design of this creature
was for some reason included on the back of an official MLP trading card binder
out of all things.
According to an early outline for Wonderbolts Academy,
Lightning Dust was at one point actually going to apologize to Rainbow Dash
for her reckless behavior at the end of the episode.
Lightning was also not dismissed from the academy as well,
with her originally being part of the group of ponies who salute Rainbow Dash.
In Magical Mystery Cure, the dreamlike space where Celestia and Twilight have a conversation
before the latter gets turned into an Alicorn
was initially going to be named the ‘Caelum’, a quote ‘special place for Princesses’.
Another change for this episode and in turn the rest of the show
was also how it was considered to make Twilight much physically bigger
after she became an alicorn.
But she ultimately ended up only becoming slightly taller.
When making this,
I stumbled across this official guide made for people working on MLP:FiM
on how exactly pony hooves should function.
They had a rule to explicitly not make the pony’s hooves be like human hands,
with no quote “sticky hooves” being allowed.
In the sort of infamous Derpy scene from the episode The Last Roundup,
both Rainbow Dash and Derpy would’ve actually had more lines
as the scene was intended to be longer,
but was shortened in the final draft of the script for time reasons.
In Crusaders of the Lost Mark,
the CMC were originally going to all get the exact same cutie mark at the end of the episode,
the Cutie Mark Crusaders emblem.
The line quote “We all got the same cutie mark” was actually meant to be literal.
According to Jim Miller,
before the concept of the school of friendship existed,
season 7 was originally going to focus on foreshadowing the Pillars of Equestria,
with season 8 having an entire story arc dedicated to bringing them back with their artifacts.
However, Hasbro wanted the show to end at season 9,
so the entire idea was condensed into season 7’s finale, Shadow Play, instead.
At the end of the episode Secrets and Pies,
there was going to be what appears to be a subtle reference
to the infamous grimdark MLP fanfiction, Cupcakes.
Pinkie Pie asks what she thinks of cupcakes,
and Rainbow Dash has a worried expression on her face.
According to some early scripts for season 8,
some of the Young Six student characters used to have different names.
This included ones like Gossamer for Ocellus, and Blaze for Smolder.
According to some planned storyline ideas for season 9,
there was once going to be an episode where either Sandbar has a crush on Tree Hugger,
or alternatively, it’s revealed they are related in some way.
In some of the pre-production notes I talked about earlier for season 9,
there were some ideas to potentially explore Celestia and Luna’s past more in depth.
It would’ve been shown that they were the pupils to the Pillars of Equestria,
specifically Starswirl the Bearded.
And speaking of him,
there was also an idea here to reveal Starswirl, most likely in some type of flashback scene,
had at one point in time been an Alicorn.
For the 200th episode of the show, Sparkle’s Seven,
the voice actors for the Mane Six
had the special opportunity to pitch their own ideas
for what they wanted to happen in the episode.
However, not everything they suggested ended up making it in.
This includes it being explained why Rarity has a different accent from her parents,
Fluttershy going on a mission to free the pigs on Sweet Apple Acres,
time capsules, time travel,
potentially new elements of harmony like the ‘Element of Victory’,
Derpy occupying multiple realities, Spike finding a long lost sibling,
and the Mane Six going into each other’s dreams, among many others.
Oh yeah, and TARA STRONG suggested to the writers that Twilight Sparkle should be pregnant.
...
Enough said.
Speaking of Twilight, here are a few pieces of concept art
which show off unused designs for her second coronation dress
seen near the end of the show.
In some pre-production notes for season 8,
an idea for an episode where all of the parents of the Mane Six
get together to solve a friendship problem was proposed.
Which sounds like it could’ve been really awesome…
although maybe not as awesome for specifically Applejack.
And finally, there’s one last thing I want to highlight.
As part of leaks which happened years ago,
a massive number of behind the scenes musical material
created for the songs featured in MLP: Friendship is Magic and Equestria Girls
was put online.
This included demos for early unfinished versions of songs,
the studio instrumentals of songs and much more.
I purposely chose not to talk about them here in this video,
as it would not fit well in this format,
but I will say that if you’re an especially big fan of the music of MLP G4,
then I would recommend checking these out.
There’s a dedicated channel on Youtube where most of them have been uploaded,
and you can listen to some really fascinating stuff here
if you look enough.
So, I am now done here, for real.
I covered a lot of different stuff spanning the decade long production
of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
and do you wanna know what’s kinda funny?
There’s still a ton of things I didn’t mention.
If I talked about every little unused idea or early concept art,
this video would be at least twice as long and probably a lot more boring.
But, I do believe I narrowed everything down to the most interesting and notable stuff.
That said, you should all now totally go ahead and comment down below
which unused ideas, concept art, or cancelled episodes I talked about
were your personal favorites.
I personally learned a lot when making this video,
so it would be awesome to see what you have to say about them too.
Whether the show would’ve been better or worse with these ideas,
or maybe why they have a certain allure to them in the first place.
I think the main reason this is all so captivating,
is how it effectively shows us a glimpse into what we could’ve got.
Like imagine if we ended up with this Discord design in the show,
if episodes like ‘Fancy Meeting You Deer’ or ‘A Date to Dance’ actually got made,
if Starlight was still named Aurora Glimmer,
or if this version of the My Little Pony logo was actually used.
MLP G4 could have been drastically different throughout many points of its production,
that looking at these really is something special.
But moreover, I think everything here also highlights just how much creative effort
must go into not only creating a show, but also keeping it going for so many years.
It’s through all this brainstorming and refining of ideas
that MLP:FiM was made into the iconic cartoon it’s known as today.
And if it wasn’t for all the incredible talent behind it,
nothing I featured in this video would have existed either.
So, with that being said, that was more of the My Little Pony we never got.
Thanks for watching.
Well, you made it to the outro, so I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, then consider doing all the normal stuff.
Like, comment or share it around, whatever you prefer.
This is my longest video yet,
and I imagine will probably remain as such for the foreseeable future.
But regardless, I definitely still had fun making this.
Like I said,
I myself genuinely learned a lot of new stuff when making this,
like uh, did you know that one pony called Svengallop
was at one point originally named ‘Pony Baloney’?
I didn’t know that.
Anyways though, thank you for watching until the end.
I’ve been talking for way too long now, my- my voice is dead.
so, that's everything I have left to say.
And so, like always,
I’ll see you
whenever I see you.
Subtitles by Mister Pino