Friendship Games
- Sunset's design was changed with a different outfit and her hair has been desaturated to "soften her up".
- Twi's first device thing is a reference to something. I don't know what it is though since they don't say.
- Opening credit sequence went through a bunch of iterations.
- Sunset is new enough to the school to not know the history with Crystal Prep.
- The in-universe reason why the prep rally is so empty is because the students didn't want to show up to a boring pep rally they knew was useless. The meta reason is because they lacked student designs.
- They still tried to animate instrument playing as realistically as possible.
- Crystal Prep has cooler colors to give it a colder feeling.
- In Cinch's office, the stool Twi sits on is short in contrast to Cinch's tall chair to make students feel subordinate.
- Shining Armor was originally a complete jerk.
- Cinch's animation was toned down to play into her rigid personality.
- Spike's dog noises were done by his VA.
- Rival 5 were named after they were designed. Kinda implied naming them was hard.
- Indigo Zap was originally going to be Lightning Dust.
- They originally were going to use already existing characters for the Rival 5, one being Spitfire.
- They bring up how the banner the guys made in A Banner Day short isn't the banner being shown. They say Celestia must've decided to not let it be put up.
- Vinyl in the background of the party scene is queuing up music which is why she's bobbing with her headphones on despite no music playing.
- Twilight's device is able to open portals because it absorbed the statue portal's magic.
- Pinkie was originally going to say "...the magic just leaked right out of me." instead of "...the magic just drained right out of me.". This is probably because people would infer 'leak' in a sexual way or relating to menstruation.
- ACADECA was originally going to be a rap song.
- The same kids singing ACADECA sung for both schools' vocals and were instructed to sing Canterlot High's vocals like nice kids and Crystal Prep's like obnoxious ones.
- The math test at the end of ACADECA between Sunset and Twi is a real geometry problem that was chosen after searching up "hardest geometry problem".
- They probably made it so you can trace where Sunset went wrong in her answer.
- Cinch changes her manipulation tactics in each of her appearances.
- Originally, Photo Finish's short was going to be her trying to get a photo of the excavation stuff being done to the field that was kept secret from the students.
- Sour Sweet's hair clip things are cranberries because they're sour and sweet.
- The dirt bikes were built in 3D.
- Chocolate rain came out of the portal created after Rainbow Dash's magic gets drained originally.
- There was originally going to be pit left after Midnight Sparkle's defeat that Cinch would then fall into. There was also an idea for Cinch to fall through a portal and end up as a hideous creature in Equestria.
- Ending credits song is Twi answering herself from her first song.
Deleted Scenes
- They removed Sunset from the duet originally planned because it wouldn't fit with her changed plot.
- The duet leads into the next deleted scene of Sunset meeting Equestrian Twilight.
- The coins Twilight has are actually bits with art depicting the heads and tails so this means bits in the pony show are more like actual coins and not blank rounds like depicted. Although it's possible this isn't the case seeing as this is a deleted scene and therefore not canon so either interpretation could be true.
- In the alternate ending, Twi went back to Crystal Prep because she was going to spread friendship among the students there.
Written 2025-1-17 Published 2025-2-1