That’s how you make a Donald Trump reference, pretty on point

@Background Pony #B9FB  
Yeah I’m not going to open that can of worms.

At least the Storm King is funny and competent.

Even without politics, using Trump’s odd expressions as reference is good practice. Makes for a wider range of possible faces.

@Ihhh  
And Background Pony used the IDW issues concerning the Storm King to make judgments on his character, despite the movie not being released.
 
I didn’t read the comics so frankly I don’t care either way.

@Background Pony #5AD8  
And?

@Ihhh  
IDW comics did tho

@Background Pony #13F1  

 
The movie hasn’t even come out yet.

@Joshua  
Why am I talking to ducks at 4 in the morning after work?

@Silent Wing  
He IS the president. They can’t all be winners.

@Background Pony #13F1  
^ This man is a rational man. Trump may be an idiot in some regards, but there’s no denying he’s done at least some good.

@Background Pony #13F1  
??????

I like Trump. GDP jumped a whooping 3% because of his decisions.
 
I don’t like the Storm King, he’s a cliche villain.

I wonder if Scar from “The Lion King” could look and act like Trump.

Good villain for a notorious president in the eyes of many?
 
This is more of a complement than a mockery if you ask me.

!media.giphy.com/media/1M9fmo1WAFVK0/giphy.gif!

@MuttonBash  
click your name in my comment.

@Ihhh  
Wait, which comment are you replying to?

@MuttonBash  
You completely missed the point.

@soundtea
 
An animated movie can take anywhere from four to seven years, even with the benefit of CGI cutting what may have been double the time with hand-drawn and painted cells. Animated movies also come with the often industry-backwards necessity of finalizing the entire concept during the pre-production. Where a traditional film might settle scripting in the pre-production stage and for that to be the only thing there’s flexibility in that where they can alter or change the direction of the script at any point in pre or post production and suffer only delays of a few months.
 
But to do the same would cause delays of far longer, into a year for animated films since you now just nuked an entire scene that has to be reconstructed, rerecorded, and rescored.
 
Royal Ocean Film Society has a video on the cartoon production process. Basically: you can’t just change the movie mid-way through. “There’s nothing to edit” as there is.
 
And while The Storm King and everything else in the movie was revised several times, this was all in the pre-production process.
 
So what does this mean about the movie lining up with the election? Well according to the Sony leaks from 2015 revealed talk about the movie was on in 2014. The election didn’t heat up until 2016. Between then and Trump becoming the power force on the national consciousness he may have been too late to be the focus of caricatures for anyone but single or two-panel political cartoon satirists or even too late to effect the movie itself. For the MLP movie to feed on Trump as a source of satire it would have probably begun now, or in 2016. By the time the art revisions were done it would be too early in politics, and too late for the film.
 
So really what I’m seeing here is a lot of projection of Trump-fans on the defensive who have sat around and heard the staff be angry about their candidate to the point that you’ve spotted the Jesus-in-the-toast is it would be and are now calling it out, instead of brushing it off as circumstance or even a broader sweep of everyone ever who campaigns for a think anywhere to draw a generalized caricature of an arch-type; or to lower the threat level on an otherwise threatening character to make it palpable for a younger viewing audience.

@AaronMk  
Yo do know the movie went through a lot of iterations, Trump was likely a thing by the time Storm King was more or less finalized.

@MuttonBash  

 
Animated movies of any length take years to make, far longer than a live-action shoot; and material like this is the earliest stage of pre-production. By all accounts, the movie was in production by the time the election was in swing and work like this would have been drawn, written, and decided upon before Trump became the big thing.
 
Hell, in animation post-production is basically the first thing to be done so changing the film at any point to accommodate for sly commentary purposes would more than likely call for a complete revision of a goodly chunk of at least animation and would have set release back, and I don’t recall there ever being a delay news release for the movie.
 
And as @Poison Trail said, these sorts of character design charts are supposed to be exagerations. And when you have a real-life cartoon character in the public eye it’s more than likely there’d be unintended crossover. We could probably find the same comparisons with Jim Carey. Or any other political figure given how cartoony photos can get of people that attack campaigns use.
 
The first picture for instance could even be like it was parodying Mitt Romney
 

 
And that’s only by running a quick thirty-second search.

“If she werent my lieutenant perhaps i would be dating her”

Storm King: “Maybe we should build a wall around Canterlot. Not just any wall, a wall that… keeps the ponies who speak Spanish out.”

@Kazapsky  
Let’s not start shit, now. You judge others based on your own bias. Let others make the decisions they wish, and form their own opinions.