The cartoon series, "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," was possibly the leakiest animated show of all time. If not all time, then it certainly ranks near the top. So from accidental releases of episodes, to a hacker breaking into Hasbro/DHX servers, I'm going to share everything I know about the leaks that surrounded FiM's 9 year run. I have these leaks in chronological order, so here we go...
----
(November 24, 2010)
Season 1's first full length song, "Winter Wrap Up," was released on YouTube by someone working for Hasbro. This happened one month before the episode by the same name was due to air on December 24, 2010. Shortly after the leak was posted, the video was taken down upon the request of Hasbro/DHX. But, it didn't stop another person that had downloaded the video from re-uploading it to YouTube just 6 days later. Strangely, that re-upload is still up on YouTube as of this posting.
----
(November 05, 2011)
Season 2's "Smile Song" from the episode, "A Friend in Deed," was released to YouTube by a Filipino animator on the show, "Veronica Dela Cruz." The leak happened about 3 months before the episode was due to air on February 2nd, 2012. The video was only the song with no animation, but had the visual part being a screen shot of Pinkie Pie in her Chicken Costume from the episode, "Luna Eclipsed." Hasbro/DHX had the video removed from YouTube and no re-uploads of that exact video were made. However, the original upload can still be found on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
This was the 2nd song in FiM's first two seasons that had been leaked to the public, prompting Hasbro's hand to crack down on material released by the show's artists.
----
(February 9, 2012)
Season 2's episode, "Hearts and Hooves Day," was accidentally released on iTunes a couple days before the official air date of February 11, 2012. This happened when season 2's episode, "The Last Roundup," was removed from iTunes, which somehow got "Hearts and Hooves Day" posted early. "Hearts and Hooves Day" was removed a few hours later, but not before the episode had already been spread across the internet.
----
(December 12, 2012)
Season 3's episode, "Wonderbolts Academy," was accidentally released on Hubworld.com a couple days before the episode's official release date of December 15, 2012. This happened because a time-code for automatic release was not entered, which made the episode publicly viewable immediately upon upload. The episode was also released on iTunes only a few hours before it was scheduled to officially air.
----
(February 11, 2013)
The song "A True, True Friend" from season 3's finale episode, "Magical Mystery Cure," was leaked to YouTube. This happened the week the episode was due to officially air on February 16, 2013. The YouTube video was only the song without animation. It was thought that it originated from a press screener DVD, but this was never 100% confirmed. Surprisingly, the original leak on YouTube still exists as of this posting.
----
(June 11, 2013)
Over on the /MLP/ board of 4chan, a Flash file of official Hasbro/DHX puppet rigs was leaked out to the public. It contained character rigs of the Wonderbolt Cadets from Season 3's episode, "Wonderbolts Academy." The file and the rigs within could be opened, viewed, and animated in Macromedia Flash 8. This leak of official assets resulted in a surge of fan-animations.
Parts of the fandom used these leaked flash assets to create other pony characters, both Canon and OC. Some people simply modified the existing flash character rigs and used them in their fan-animations, resulting in Hasbro/DHX taking action to have those fan-animations removed from YouTube. Others used the flash character rigs as models or templates to create their own rigs from scratch. Hasbro/DHX was less likely to hit fan-animations where pony rigs were completely created by the fandom.
As a result of this leak, Hasbro changed/altered contracts, further cracking down on what their artists were able to do at work and share online.
----
(November 26 and/or 27, 2013)
Season 4's episode, "Castle Mane-ia," was taken from the website code of Hubworld.com. The leaked copy (or copies) of these were low resolution at only 360p. The episode was leaked to the internet a few days before the official airing date of November 30, 2013.
----
(January 31, 2014)
Season 4's episode, "Pinkie Pride," was mistakenly released on Google Play a day before the episode's official air date of February 1, 2014. The episode was quickly pulled from Google Play, but it was too late. The episode had already been downloaded and distributed across the internet.
----
(September 21, 2015)
Season 5's episode, "Scare Master," was accidentally released early on iTunes about 5 weeks before the official air date of October 31, 2015. This, of course, was a mistake as the episode, "Rarity Investigates," was supposed to appear on iTunes on September 21 instead. "Scare Master" was quickly removed and "Rarity Investigates" posted in place of it. As usual, the fandom was quick to grab "Scare Master" before it was removed and shared the episode across the internet.
----
(September 21, 2015)
On the same day as the "Scare Master" episode leak, over on the /MLP/ board of 4chan, a file folder called "AssetsLicensor" was leaked. It was thought to be a package of assets sent out to licensees for things like toy packaging and such; hence the "Licensor" part of the file name.
This file package was full of all season 1 stuff. It contained 8 additional sub folders. These folders were Additional Background Art, Artworks, Brand Elements, Core Cast Gags, Critters, Extras Incidental Characters, Minor Characters, and Props. It was packed with so much show insight with things like vector backgrounds, character designs (including some pre-S1 character designs) and a glimpse of a couple pages from the show's Bible, that this 1.43GB leak of over 400 files was considered a goldmine at the time.
----
(October, 2017)
The month of October, 2017, saw 3 separate days of leaks.
The first was around October 2nd. It was the G4 Movie a week before it was due to be released in theaters. This movie file was in a zip folder 38.3GB in size. When unzipped, it was 128GB. It was first theorized that it had been obtained from a theater file somehow, but later was discovered to come from a hacker who had found a way into Hasbro's/DHX's servers. When the movie officially came out in theaters, viewers found that the theatrical release was visually darker. The leaked version may have been a working cut of some kind. Of the two, much of the fandom preferred the leaked version.
The hacker showed up again for the next October leak around the 7th. The day started out with the encoded final cuts of season 7's episodes, 22-26, getting leaked (Once Upon a Zeppelin, Uncommon Bond, Secrets and Pies, and Shadow Play P1 & P2.) Then later in the day, it was the original season 7 scripts, the Intro Animatic, the G4 Movie script, and the Official Show Bible.
The hacker soon appeared again with the final October leak around the 14th. It was a file folder simply called "Flash." It had 4 flash documents inside consisting of a wet Starlight rig, a Daybreaker rig, and two flash scenes from season 7's episode 10.
----
(December 8, 2017)
The hacker arrived again with yet more leaks. This one started as hacked Hasbro emails. Among some of the emails were discussions with Hasbro on the investigation of the October movie leak, and early G5 concepts of basically a rebooted G4 with a race-swapped mane-6.
And then, the hacker dropped the FTP Credentials for the DHX server. Random Anons used those credentials to access the DHX server and download files from it before the server was shut down. Thus, a large 40.5GB file folder called "Poner Assets Paste" was born. It contained mid-production rough cuts of season 8 episodes, the new intro for season 8 (including all flash files involved with it,) the new intro for Equestria Girls, and 7 Equestria Girls shorts as mid-production rough cut versions.
----
(January 8, 2018)
The hacker uploaded a new file called "Update," containing a 2nd round of new hacked emails.
A few days later, the hacker's leaked content that was stored on a Russian file sharing site had been nuked. On January 13th, the hacker re-uploaded the files elsewhere in a zip file called "Release." It contained much of the same as previously leaked by the hacker.
----
(September, 2019)
The month of September, 2019, saw 2 separate days of leaks.
On the 1st of September, the same hacker leaked the DNxHD masters for episodes 22-26 of season 9. There were also scripts for all MLP episodes, shorts, and clipshows.
On the 28th of September, a full production demo of the song ,"Make Our Mark," and three production versions of the song, "You're in My Head Like a Catchy Song," were leaked.
----
(October, 2019)
The month of October, 2019, saw 2 separate days of leaks.
The leak train continued to chug along with the October 10th leak on FiM's 9th anniversary. This one was a whopper of a leak. It contained nearly every single version of every song from all of G4's FiM and Equestria Girls in a huge 173GB file called, "Songs."
There was also a file called "Scripts" in this anniversary leak containing various versions of scripts for all of MLP and Equestria Girls. A couple things among the scripts were a MLP mini-bible and the Equestria Girls production bible, plus a whole lot more.
Another file during this anniversary leak was called "TST." This contained the test pilot for FiM called, "My Little Pony Adventures," along with all the flash files involved with it. That test pilot was from 2009.
The final October 10th leak was the production files for season 2's episode 14, "The Last Roundup." This had all the flash files involved with making the episode.
The next and final October leak was on the 14th. The hacker dropped upon the internet the DNxHD master for the Equestria Girls special, "Holidays Unwrapped," at 66GB in size. At the time, only foreign language versions of this special had officially aired. It wasn't until this leak that we got the English version before it was due to air in English.
----
(November 2nd, 2019)
And now, we are at the grand finale of all these leaks. This one was a whopper 2.0 from the hacker. The production files for the following episodes were leaked to the world...
422 = "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3"
506 = "Appleossa's Most Wanted"
509 = "Slice of Life"
624 = "Top Bolt"
713 = "The Perfect Pear"
813 = "The Mean 6"
819 = "On the Road to Friendship"
823 = "Sounds of Silence"
922 = "Growing Up is Hard to Do"
924 = "The Ending of the End - Part 1"
925 = "The Ending of the End - Part 2"
That last leak of production files is all animatics, audio, concept art, FLA files, SWF files, AEP files, MOV files and more for each of those episodes. Basically, nearly everything you need to produce an episode.
Well, there you have it. That was a lot of leaks. I may have forgotten or missed a few smaller ones, but that was the major bulk of it.
I imagine at least one other animated show had an episode or two accidentally released early, but how many can say that they had company servers related to their shows hacked and the files distributed to their specific fandom? Most of what the hacker leaked to the G4 fandom was never meant to be seen beyond the walls of Hasbro/DHX. It was quite the wild ride of leaks, to say the least.
----
(November 24, 2010)
Season 1's first full length song, "Winter Wrap Up," was released on YouTube by someone working for Hasbro. This happened one month before the episode by the same name was due to air on December 24, 2010. Shortly after the leak was posted, the video was taken down upon the request of Hasbro/DHX. But, it didn't stop another person that had downloaded the video from re-uploading it to YouTube just 6 days later. Strangely, that re-upload is still up on YouTube as of this posting.
----
(November 05, 2011)
Season 2's "Smile Song" from the episode, "A Friend in Deed," was released to YouTube by a Filipino animator on the show, "Veronica Dela Cruz." The leak happened about 3 months before the episode was due to air on February 2nd, 2012. The video was only the song with no animation, but had the visual part being a screen shot of Pinkie Pie in her Chicken Costume from the episode, "Luna Eclipsed." Hasbro/DHX had the video removed from YouTube and no re-uploads of that exact video were made. However, the original upload can still be found on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
This was the 2nd song in FiM's first two seasons that had been leaked to the public, prompting Hasbro's hand to crack down on material released by the show's artists.
----
(February 9, 2012)
Season 2's episode, "Hearts and Hooves Day," was accidentally released on iTunes a couple days before the official air date of February 11, 2012. This happened when season 2's episode, "The Last Roundup," was removed from iTunes, which somehow got "Hearts and Hooves Day" posted early. "Hearts and Hooves Day" was removed a few hours later, but not before the episode had already been spread across the internet.
----
(December 12, 2012)
Season 3's episode, "Wonderbolts Academy," was accidentally released on Hubworld.com a couple days before the episode's official release date of December 15, 2012. This happened because a time-code for automatic release was not entered, which made the episode publicly viewable immediately upon upload. The episode was also released on iTunes only a few hours before it was scheduled to officially air.
----
(February 11, 2013)
The song "A True, True Friend" from season 3's finale episode, "Magical Mystery Cure," was leaked to YouTube. This happened the week the episode was due to officially air on February 16, 2013. The YouTube video was only the song without animation. It was thought that it originated from a press screener DVD, but this was never 100% confirmed. Surprisingly, the original leak on YouTube still exists as of this posting.
----
(June 11, 2013)
Over on the /MLP/ board of 4chan, a Flash file of official Hasbro/DHX puppet rigs was leaked out to the public. It contained character rigs of the Wonderbolt Cadets from Season 3's episode, "Wonderbolts Academy." The file and the rigs within could be opened, viewed, and animated in Macromedia Flash 8. This leak of official assets resulted in a surge of fan-animations.
Parts of the fandom used these leaked flash assets to create other pony characters, both Canon and OC. Some people simply modified the existing flash character rigs and used them in their fan-animations, resulting in Hasbro/DHX taking action to have those fan-animations removed from YouTube. Others used the flash character rigs as models or templates to create their own rigs from scratch. Hasbro/DHX was less likely to hit fan-animations where pony rigs were completely created by the fandom.
As a result of this leak, Hasbro changed/altered contracts, further cracking down on what their artists were able to do at work and share online.
----
(November 26 and/or 27, 2013)
Season 4's episode, "Castle Mane-ia," was taken from the website code of Hubworld.com. The leaked copy (or copies) of these were low resolution at only 360p. The episode was leaked to the internet a few days before the official airing date of November 30, 2013.
----
(January 31, 2014)
Season 4's episode, "Pinkie Pride," was mistakenly released on Google Play a day before the episode's official air date of February 1, 2014. The episode was quickly pulled from Google Play, but it was too late. The episode had already been downloaded and distributed across the internet.
----
(September 21, 2015)
Season 5's episode, "Scare Master," was accidentally released early on iTunes about 5 weeks before the official air date of October 31, 2015. This, of course, was a mistake as the episode, "Rarity Investigates," was supposed to appear on iTunes on September 21 instead. "Scare Master" was quickly removed and "Rarity Investigates" posted in place of it. As usual, the fandom was quick to grab "Scare Master" before it was removed and shared the episode across the internet.
----
(September 21, 2015)
On the same day as the "Scare Master" episode leak, over on the /MLP/ board of 4chan, a file folder called "AssetsLicensor" was leaked. It was thought to be a package of assets sent out to licensees for things like toy packaging and such; hence the "Licensor" part of the file name.
This file package was full of all season 1 stuff. It contained 8 additional sub folders. These folders were Additional Background Art, Artworks, Brand Elements, Core Cast Gags, Critters, Extras Incidental Characters, Minor Characters, and Props. It was packed with so much show insight with things like vector backgrounds, character designs (including some pre-S1 character designs) and a glimpse of a couple pages from the show's Bible, that this 1.43GB leak of over 400 files was considered a goldmine at the time.
----
(October, 2017)
The month of October, 2017, saw 3 separate days of leaks.
The first was around October 2nd. It was the G4 Movie a week before it was due to be released in theaters. This movie file was in a zip folder 38.3GB in size. When unzipped, it was 128GB. It was first theorized that it had been obtained from a theater file somehow, but later was discovered to come from a hacker who had found a way into Hasbro's/DHX's servers. When the movie officially came out in theaters, viewers found that the theatrical release was visually darker. The leaked version may have been a working cut of some kind. Of the two, much of the fandom preferred the leaked version.
The hacker showed up again for the next October leak around the 7th. The day started out with the encoded final cuts of season 7's episodes, 22-26, getting leaked (Once Upon a Zeppelin, Uncommon Bond, Secrets and Pies, and Shadow Play P1 & P2.) Then later in the day, it was the original season 7 scripts, the Intro Animatic, the G4 Movie script, and the Official Show Bible.
The hacker soon appeared again with the final October leak around the 14th. It was a file folder simply called "Flash." It had 4 flash documents inside consisting of a wet Starlight rig, a Daybreaker rig, and two flash scenes from season 7's episode 10.
----
(December 8, 2017)
The hacker arrived again with yet more leaks. This one started as hacked Hasbro emails. Among some of the emails were discussions with Hasbro on the investigation of the October movie leak, and early G5 concepts of basically a rebooted G4 with a race-swapped mane-6.
And then, the hacker dropped the FTP Credentials for the DHX server. Random Anons used those credentials to access the DHX server and download files from it before the server was shut down. Thus, a large 40.5GB file folder called "Poner Assets Paste" was born. It contained mid-production rough cuts of season 8 episodes, the new intro for season 8 (including all flash files involved with it,) the new intro for Equestria Girls, and 7 Equestria Girls shorts as mid-production rough cut versions.
----
(January 8, 2018)
The hacker uploaded a new file called "Update," containing a 2nd round of new hacked emails.
A few days later, the hacker's leaked content that was stored on a Russian file sharing site had been nuked. On January 13th, the hacker re-uploaded the files elsewhere in a zip file called "Release." It contained much of the same as previously leaked by the hacker.
----
(September, 2019)
The month of September, 2019, saw 2 separate days of leaks.
On the 1st of September, the same hacker leaked the DNxHD masters for episodes 22-26 of season 9. There were also scripts for all MLP episodes, shorts, and clipshows.
On the 28th of September, a full production demo of the song ,"Make Our Mark," and three production versions of the song, "You're in My Head Like a Catchy Song," were leaked.
----
(October, 2019)
The month of October, 2019, saw 2 separate days of leaks.
The leak train continued to chug along with the October 10th leak on FiM's 9th anniversary. This one was a whopper of a leak. It contained nearly every single version of every song from all of G4's FiM and Equestria Girls in a huge 173GB file called, "Songs."
There was also a file called "Scripts" in this anniversary leak containing various versions of scripts for all of MLP and Equestria Girls. A couple things among the scripts were a MLP mini-bible and the Equestria Girls production bible, plus a whole lot more.
Another file during this anniversary leak was called "TST." This contained the test pilot for FiM called, "My Little Pony Adventures," along with all the flash files involved with it. That test pilot was from 2009.
The final October 10th leak was the production files for season 2's episode 14, "The Last Roundup." This had all the flash files involved with making the episode.
The next and final October leak was on the 14th. The hacker dropped upon the internet the DNxHD master for the Equestria Girls special, "Holidays Unwrapped," at 66GB in size. At the time, only foreign language versions of this special had officially aired. It wasn't until this leak that we got the English version before it was due to air in English.
----
(November 2nd, 2019)
And now, we are at the grand finale of all these leaks. This one was a whopper 2.0 from the hacker. The production files for the following episodes were leaked to the world...
422 = "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3"
506 = "Appleossa's Most Wanted"
509 = "Slice of Life"
624 = "Top Bolt"
713 = "The Perfect Pear"
813 = "The Mean 6"
819 = "On the Road to Friendship"
823 = "Sounds of Silence"
922 = "Growing Up is Hard to Do"
924 = "The Ending of the End - Part 1"
925 = "The Ending of the End - Part 2"
That last leak of production files is all animatics, audio, concept art, FLA files, SWF files, AEP files, MOV files and more for each of those episodes. Basically, nearly everything you need to produce an episode.
Well, there you have it. That was a lot of leaks. I may have forgotten or missed a few smaller ones, but that was the major bulk of it.
I imagine at least one other animated show had an episode or two accidentally released early, but how many can say that they had company servers related to their shows hacked and the files distributed to their specific fandom? Most of what the hacker leaked to the G4 fandom was never meant to be seen beyond the walls of Hasbro/DHX. It was quite the wild ride of leaks, to say the least.
