Fandom OC's appearing in the show?

During today's episode, something very familiar appeared in the background. A light-yellow stallion, with light brown hair, green eyes, and a string instrument cutie mark. Why does that sound familiar? Simple, because that is the description of the OC pony belonging to #horsefamous musician Mandopony. What does this mean?

At this point we are unsure, but we also know that this is NOT an isolated occurrence.

Last week, during the Sweetie Bell episode, another pair of familiar looking ponies appeared on screen, this time as fillies. 

If you are unfamiliar with what CapperGeneral's and Final Draft's OC's look like, the internet provides this handy comparison image. 

What is interesting about these cases, is that it is never the "owners" of the OCs that notice the similarites first, in every instance, it has been other community members who have pointed them out. 

None of these ponies look exactly like their supposed OC counterparts. The mane on the Mandopony isn't exactly right, the Final Draft Filly is an earth pony and not a Unicorn, and the "Capper" OC more closely resembles the tone of the first variations of the character, as opposed to its slightly altered current self. 

(Capper notes that the original character made for him seems to be a mare, likely as a joke by the artist)

Nonetheless, the similarities are quite visible. Are the show artists slipping these subtle references in to mess with the community, or is the community grasping at straws?

One might think the latter, but one anon makes a very good point, the comics have definitely done this sort of thing before.

In one of the IDW comics (of dubious canonical nature), we can see a Mandopony OC, plain as day, fleeing alongside the OC of his girlfriend and MLP storyboard artist Sibsy. One comic shows a character that resembles the OC of RunkaChunk RinaChan, which Andy Price even got involved to claim it was just a coincidence.  Another comic shows a pony that strongly resembles the color scheme and mane-design of the /mlp/ OC "Tracy Cage".

As this anon points out, the cutie mark is not the tell-tale Nicolas Cage face, but rather 4-leaf clovers arranged akin to the 4chan logo. Which is one thing that non-believers would have to take into account; the characters in the show could not realistically ever be exact replicas of a community-created-character, for legal reasons alone, things that the show would never want to deal with, for such a simple humorous reference.

So IS the showstaff doing this to prank the community, or are we all just paranoid? We ask; 'why not both?'
But we'll leave the final decision up to you. The fans in question seem to be having fun with the idea though, Capper has changed his twitter icon to the filly in question for the time being, and Mando has posted this tweet claiming that the character is not his OC, but instantly negated with a wink.

Yes, I saw this guy in the background. No, it's not my OC. You guys can calm down now. ;) #NotMando #ArinsSmelly pic.twitter.com/Jo42SMMI01
— MandoPony (@MandoPony) March 29, 2014

The real question is; who's next?


Update: One of our commenters pointed this one out to us. Another child pony, who strongly resembles the Bronycon Head of Operations GumballCrash. If you know of any others from this season, post them below for inclusion.

Update:
EQD posted an image of the same pony as we had, stating "MANDO!" (it has since been changed).
Mando and Sibsy have addressed the issue further.
At length.
In Maximum backpedal mode.

Sure guys. We believe you.