What are some surprisingly dark moments in canon MLP?

[WingedDragon]

[Text description:
Moondancer was sleeping peacefully. Awakening with a start, she found Twilight beside her.
"Cotton Candy is missing!" said Twilight, "Have you seen her?"
"Cotton Candy should go on a diet," yawned Moondancer. "She ate my favorite bluegrass and my prettiest wild flowers. I put her in hibernation until winter!"
Twilight was stunned. "Free her from the spell, Moondancer. Her friends are worried!"
"Is it Winter already?" teased Moondancer. But she freed Cotton Candy from the spell and even called the West Wing to give her a ride home.]

I recently read Heckyeahponyscans @OMGponyyeah tumblr thread about Cotton Candy being quite a glutton, and lunathewafflelord provide us with this scan.
Apparently, Moondancer can casually turn a pony into a Sleeping beauty. Considering the wild flowers were in bloom, it could mean that she was considering putting Cotton Candy in a hibernation since Spring/Summer until Winter. She was most likely joking, but it still surprises me.

Also, my personal favourite is the origin of Twinkle eyes ponies. Apparently, these bejewelled beauties were created when an evil wizard enslaved a portion of ponies and force them to work in an underground mine until they became blind. Applejack stumbled upon the mine, got captured herself, but she knocked the wizard and his magical crystal throne into a pit. The magical crystal shattered, and implied to impale the blind ponies, granting them magical gemstone eyes.

Bonus point that the blind ponies urging Applejack to escape alone because they thought it was too late for them.

Anyone has anything to share?

 

[Sassarazzmadazzles]

the g4 umbrums in the comics lol

 

[Quill]

I was taken aback when I rewatched "Rescue at Midnight Castle" as an adult. There was a lot of freaky imagery in that one! The scene of the kidnapped ponies being transformed into monsters? "A head will roll" and then pointing at Spike? All the times it showed Tirac's creepy clawed hand stroking the wriggling/pulsing pouch?! BIG YIKE

 

[LadyMoondancer]

Rescue at Midnight Castle is sooo dark in tone, and I love it! Wish the whole G1 cartoon had been like that!

There's a UK book where a princess is visiting Majesty and evil Green Eyes the goblin is like "heh heh, I will trick the princess into climbing into this big basket and magic her away," and, well . . .

 

[StormMaeker]

The Return of Tambelon. To little kid me, that was probably one of the scariest

When the unicorns winked out, they couldn’t wink back in. The unicorns started disappearing and nobody could find them.
Then Megan started having dreams where she was running around a cliff and saw Ribbon who’d appear in the dream say “Tambelon”.
Basically, the lost city of Tambelon appears on a dark cloud, ponies enslaved, evil Grogar

I think the part about winking out and not back in again the dream Megan had creeped me the most. I think little kid me found Grogar a bit scary too?

 

[darcerin]

I was taken aback when I rewatched "Rescue at Midnight Castle" as an adult. There was a lot of freaky imagery in that one! The scene of the kidnapped ponies being transformed into monsters? "A head will roll" and then pointing at Spike? All the times it showed Tirac's creepy clawed hand stroking the wriggling/pulsing pouch?! BIG YIKE

I have been pondering this for years at how scary that is for kids. How that got greenlit to be made is beyond me. Yes everything turned out well in the end, but not with some serious action behind it! Then you look at Escape from Katrina, And that's a drug addicted cat who threatens to murder a baby pony!!! Our pony childhoods were dark!!!

 

[Greebrun]

Speaking of Rescue at Midnight Castle, how bout the fact that the Sea Ponies are so caught up in singing their song, they don't notice Megan and Applejack about to drown:

Or the fact that Scorpan bounces off the roof on his way down:

 

[Ora]

Or "The Stolen Shadow", where Seashell is just having fun with her sea pony friends and falls asleep on the beach... just for an evil shape-shifting enchanter named Chameleon to show up and magically cut off her shadow. Majesty, apparently, can't just bring it back, but she'll accompany Seashell and occasionally teleport in backup so she could get it back - otherwise Chameleon will use the shadow to create a doppelganger of Seashell, while he'll trap the real one in the Caverns of Memory, where she'll lose the memory of everything she knew and loved and spend the rest of her life pulling the carriages of goblin miners who work for Chameleon, digging for gold and jewels there. (Is that maybe the same place where the twinkle-eye ponies were captured? Or are there just many creepy mines around? Probably the latter.) The goblins look like creepy versions of dwarfs from Disney's Snow White, btw - chubby bearded fellows with red eyes and protruding fangs.

Eventually, safely bypassing many dangers, they manage to not just get back Seashell's shadow, but to get Chameleon himself splashed with the waters of forgetfulness, thus permanently neutralising him without actually killing him, but it is implied in several lines of conversation that he had successfully done that to other ponies repeatedly. Implicitly, whenever he and his goblins ran out of cart-pulling workforce, he went and grabbed a careless pony or two.

Generally, it seems that in G1 life is overall good for ponies who live near Dream Castle and Majesty first (in the books), and then in the show (where we have to assume Majesty left on some long quest or something of the sort) the protection of the piece of Rainbow and Moochick's counsel. But beyond that... Ponyland seems to be a very dangerous place to live in. Have all the examples we just gave, have poor Knightshade and his entire village, anything... it looks like a pony getting into very dire straits is fairly commonplace. Proper creepy mythical Middle Ages, they just have modern kitchen implements.

 

[Ora]

[Text description:
Moondancer was sleeping peacefully. Awakening with a start, she found Twilight beside her.
"Cotton Candy is missing!" said Twilight, "Have you seen her?"
"Cotton Candy should go on a diet," yawned Moondancer. "She ate my favorite bluegrass and my prettiest wild flowers. I put her in hibernation until winter!"
Twilight was stunned. "Free her from the spell, Moondancer. Her friends are worried!"
"Is it Winter already?" teased Moondancer. But she freed Cotton Candy from the spell and even called the West Wing to give her a ride home.]

I recently read Heckyeahponyscans @OMGponyyeah tumblr thread about Cotton Candy being quite a glutton, and lunathewafflelord provide us with this scan.
Apparently, Moondancer can casually turn a pony into a Sleeping beauty. Considering the wild flowers were in bloom, it could mean that she was considering putting Cotton Candy in a hibernation since Spring/Summer until Winter. She was most likely joking, but it still surprises me.

Also, my personal favourite is the origin of Twinkle eyes ponies. Apparently, these bejewelled beauties were created when an evil wizard enslaved a portion of ponies and force them to work in an underground mine until they became blind. Applejack stumbled upon the mine, got captured herself, but she knocked the wizard and his magical crystal throne into a pit. The magical crystal shattered, and implied to impale the blind ponies, granting them magical gemstone eyes.

Bonus point that the blind ponies urging Applejack to escape alone because they thought it was too late for them.

Anyone has anything to share?

Also, there's a comic in one of the early magazines where Moondancer puts Cotton Candy to sleep (I can take pictures if someone wants it), but there's no mention of her intending to keep CC that way until winter, she just does it on the spot when she's angry, and later wakes her up when other ponies are looking for her.

Do you by any chance know where exactly the Twinkle-eyed story is? Thanks!

 

[StormMaeker]

Do you by any chance know where exactly the Twinkle-eyed story is? Thanks!

This one?
@LadyMoondancer ’s blog there has a lot of great archived pony material

 

[Ora]

This one?
@LadyMoondancer ’s blog there has a lot of great archived pony material

Yes! #11, thanks! Still don't have that one, but I'm slowly collecting them.

 

[darcerin]

Okay Majesty and the basket story.....dang. She turned the Goblin to STONE. No other unicorns had that kind of power! She was a powerful pony!

 

[WingedDragon]

Okay Majesty and the basket story.....dang. She turned the Goblin to STONE. No other unicorns had that kind of power! She was a powerful pony!

Queen Majesty in the comic single-hoofly keep all the powerful wizards, dragons, and monsters afraid and away from her ponies.

 

[Ora]

And she turned the trolls of the Castle of Darkness into foam floating in the moat of formerly their castle. And let's not forget that both Majesty and Twilight can not only grant wishes, but can also turn back time, as documented in multiple stories. Let's be honest, Majesty didn't make it into the cartoon because she'd be OP and steal the show. Granted, she doesn't always single-hoofly solve problems, she also often helps and nudges others to do something on their own, but still... they'd always know that there's very powerful backup to call when needed.

 

[Glistening Rainlight]

There are tons of dark moments in mlp. Honestly too many to try to list all in one sitting haha. Here are a few from Equestria Girls, though~

As someone who has experienced severe amnesia, this cut me right to the bone.

Also the ending of this song. "Won't be long before I'm gone," has some serious implications, depending on how you take it. So like... Just Wallflower Blush as a whole.

Also the transformations of both Sunset and Twilight (I might even say especially Sunset), and Twilight's subsequent nightmares and fears through Legend of Everfree which amount to her being afraid of losing control of herself. She spends much of the movie terrified of herself.

There's also basically this entire story. The "Equestria Girls Holiday Special" comic, where Sunset reveals she's been alone for years both before and after she went the the human world, so her friends invite her to spend the holidays with them... only to have a certain group start spreading rumors that turn not only her friends against her, but the entire school, in the days leading up to the holiday. It's not as heavy-handed as some of the darker moments of MLP, but I feel it's worth mentioning.