Babylon 5/Tropes A to H

This page covers tropes found in Babylon 5. Tropes beginning with letters I-P can be found at Babylon 5/Tropes I to P and tropes beginning with letters Q-Z can be found at Babylon 5/Tropes Q to Z. Subjective tropes go to the YMMV page.

Tropes used in Babylon 5/Tropes A to H include:

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• Two Plus Torture Makes Five: Sheridan is subjected to this sort of torture by President Clark's forces. A rare justified example, since they need him to believe his false confession is true, so it will stand up to telepathic scans.

A

• Abandon Ship:
  • The first season episode Babylon Squared features a long-thought-lost space station re-emerging from a Negative Space Wedgie just long enough for the crew of Babylon Five to effect an evacuation. As the station is about to disappear again, the remaining crew members (and the personnel from Babylon Five who came to retrieve them) make a hasty retreat to cram onto the remaining shuttles.
  • The same episode includes a Flash Forward where Babylon Five, in flames, is being evacuated as the security personnel frantically attempt to hold off the unseen attackers to give the civilians time to escape. As a matter of fact, the visual of a lone shuttle escaping the station just before it explodes gets used for a long string of Prophecy Twists That visual does finally come true. But not the way anyone expects.
  • Commented upon in the episode No Surrender, No Retreat, where one of the ships defending Proxima 3 is critically damaged after another ship collides with it and Sheridan comments "My god, the crew... get to the life pods... get to the life pods--" before the ship explodes.
  • A Voice In The Wilderness has the planet of Epsilon 3 in danger of blowing up, and taking the orbiting space station with it. Sinclair and Garibaldi agree that if they can't stop it, Garibaldi is to force Ivanova to evacuate on the last shuttle, even if he has to knock her out and throw her on the shuttle himself. This conversation is Harsher in Hindsight three years later when an unconscious and mortally wounded Ivanova has to be carried to an escape pod after her ship is crippled during the Earth Alliance Civil War.
• Absentee Actor:
  • Numerous examples, starting with the very first season as several actors from the Pilot Movie were unavailable.
  • Also worked its way into the gag reels for "Severed Dreams". Robert Foxworth had appeared in two episodes of season 2 as General Hague. He was supposed to return for "Severed Dreams" but was double-booked for a two-parter on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His Babylon 5 character was killed off-screen. His replacement character (played by Bruce McGill) is delivering a somber report of how "General Hague was killed in our last fire-fight," and how it was so sudden there wasn't anything anyone could do. In one take, McGill instead trails off, in the same depressing tone of voice, to "General Hague... is on Deep Space Nine. Apparently, he was double-booked by his agent, there was nothing to be done."
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Cold Open for "Divided Loyalties" shows a Mars Resistance member staggering through one of these beneath the Mars colony.
• Actor Existence Failure: When asked about sequels, Straczynski was known to say that he didn't see how it would be possible "so long as Andreas Katsulas, (G'Kar) and Richard Biggs (Dr. Franklin) remain dead." That said, he did The Lost Tales after their passing, and now with his Hollywood success, there seem to be very early feelers out about a real movie.
• Abusive Precursors:
  • The Shadows.
  • Arguably also applies to the Vorlons.
• Academia Is Bad: In the commentary for the last episode of the fourth season, JMS stated that, as an academic himself, he always hated the habit of deconstructing a historical character, thus perhaps the title "The Deconstruction of Fallen Stars". He also intended the holographic operator in the third segment to be a doctor.
• Accidental Marriage: The "Religions Week" in "The Parliament of Dreams" featured an extremely confusing Minbari ceremony involving eating red fruit and some intense looks between Delenn and Sinclair. Although the people attending it were told that it was a "rebirth" ceremony, Catherine Sakai informs him that it could also have doubled as a wedding. He jokes that he didn't think that Londo and G'Kar were one another's type. Also, it was a rebirth ceremony, as Delenn goes into the Chrysalis at the end of the season, to be reborn as half-human.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: When Sheridan is captured and interrogated by President Clark's forces, his interrogator shares a corned beef sandwich with him to gain his trust. Both halves of the sandwich were poisoned, but the interrogator had been eating small amounts every day for several years and had built up an immunity. Sheridan had not, and the poison made him very sick.
  • "This is a metaphor for something...but I'm not quite sure what."
• The Aesthetics of Technology: Played mostly straight with the Minbari, Centauri, Vorlons, and several League and Independent races, but subverted with the Narns. They deliberately try to invoke this trope with their fancy looking ships, but the only thing advanced about them are the weapons they pilfered from their former Centauri overlords/oppressors. Granted, they mount a lot of those pilfered weapons, making their G'Qan heavy cruisers a match for any ship in its class short of the Minbari.
  • Also justified in-story, as Narn buy technology from anyone they can and just slap a coat of paint in their team colors on it.
  • The Centauri, on the other hand, might count as an aversion of this trope, since their ships are rather ugly. (To humans, anyway. For all we know, the Centauri like them like that.)
    • The Centauri ships seem to be fancy more than anything else, but then, the Centauri love ostentatious things in general.
  • One of the league races copied the aesthetics of the most advanced races in their ship design, but their ships are actually some of the least advanced in the setting.
  • As the designs become more powerful, the human ships get gradually sleeker and meaner looking, as shown by the warships in the order they are introduced, going from the somewhat ungainly looking Hyperion to the intimidating Omegas and the imposingly angular Warlocks.
• Affably Evil:
  • The Interrogator from "Intersections in Real Time." Carried out the task of slowly mentally breaking Captain Sheridan over the course of days, with the demeanor of a kindly and mild mannered middle aged accountant. JMS was trying to make a point there, about the evil of the common man. He was meant to be like all those Nazi war criminals who said "I was just doing my job."
  • Lyndisty, Vir Cotto's one-time fiancée, is a prim and proper Stepford Smiler with absolutely zero regard for Narn life. She proudly mentions how she accompanied her military father on his eugenics programs, and personally knifing hundreds of Narns to death.
  • Alfred Bester. There are moments in the series when you ALMOST like him.
    • Only "almost"?
• Affectionate Pickpocket: In "Legacies", Ivanova has a heartwarming conversation with a Street Urchin that ends with the two of them clasping hands in a gesture of mutual sympathy... and the street urchin takes the opportunity to steal the commlink off Ivanova's hand, just to keep in practice.
• Alien Blood: The alien kickboxing champion in "TKO" bleeds white.
  • Some species are mentioned as having "yellow" and "green" blood cells.
  • Mimbari blood is red like human blood but is a lot thinner, from what we saw in Soul Hunter
• Alien Lunch: Spoo, heavily processed meat from one of the ugliest herd animals in the known universe.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Psi Corps regulations (which get broken almost as much as the original Prime Directive).
• Aliens Speaking English: English seems to be the lingua franca of Babylon 5, but many aliens (especially Centauri nobility) have noticeable accents when speaking it. They all have their own languages, but a Translation Convention applies most of the time (Word of God has verified this, at least for when you have two or more aliens of the same race talking to each other). One alien calls English "the human trade language", meaning that other languages, human and alien, are used.
  • In "A Voice in the Wilderness", a previously-unknown alien race requests "language files" from the station's computers in order to be able to speak to them in English.
  • A variation of this trope becomes a plot point in the fourth season. Delenn and Lennier are aboard a Minbari ship that has a First Contact situation with another alien race. Lennier siezes the initiative to send the alien ship language files on Interlac so they can communicate. The aliens respond in Minbari, despite claiming that they haven't encountered the Minbari before.
  • There are a few times this trope is averted.
    • When Sheridan is forced to leave in the middle of a very long Minbari meal/ceremony, Lennier mutters something presumably unflattering about Sheridan under his breath. This was left untranslated, presumably because JMS thought it would be funnier if the audience didn't know what he said.
    • In another episode, Delenn and a Minbari captain are being held prisoner by unfriendly humans. When they speak to each other, it is in their native tongue (with subtitles), to avoid confusion.
    • When Ivanova tracks down one of the First Ones, she asks them to aid the younger races. When she mentions the Vorlon, the First One responds angrily "Vorlon tavutna chog!" When asked about it, JMS said the sentence could be loosely translated as "The Vorlon can kiss my ass."
• Aliens Steal Cable: In "A Voice in the Wilderness", Varn learned English from monitoring human radio communications.
  • According to source material, the Brakiri race picked up Earth transmissions at some point in their history and began modelling their culture after what they saw. This presents itself on the show in subtle ways, such as the Brakiri Ambassador wearing clothing that resembles a human business suit. It's stated that there is one piece of Earth pop culture that got garbled in transmission and has been a great mystery to the Brakiri for years: Who shot J.R.?
• All Asians Are Alike: Sheridan, when attempting to describe a Minbari witness: "Bald, with a bone on his head".
  • In his defense, he only saw the Minbari for a couple seconds, and was standing several feet above him.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Ivanova says this verbatim at one point shortly after Marcus saves her life at the cost of his own. The series is not itself an example, however, as several major characters (Delenn and Sheridan, with each other; Garibaldi, with Lise) end up Happily Married.
• All Myths Are True: Well, more like "All Religions Are True." Every alien religious belief portrayed on the show (with the exception of the Centauri's) is shown to be at least partially based in fact, even the one about a bicentennial festival where the dead come back to life for one night.
• All There in the Manual: Several details, such as Ulkesh's name (in universe, he insists on being called Kosh, supposedly to maintain appearances after Kosh's death, but quite possibly just to dick with the lesser younger races on the station.
  • The ship designs have lots of little features that were explained on paper, but never used in the show itself. The Earth Alliance Omega Destroyers, for instance, featured Starfury launch bays in the rotating sections, energy mine launchers in the bow section below the hangar bay, and missile tubes along the sides of the hull (all of these details are visible on the models as seen in the show).
  • There's tons of this. The Official Guide to Babylon Five fleshes out the minor aliens that make up the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. Such details as the name of the Drazi currency, the political structure of the Llort, and how the Abbai reproduce; it's all in there, though next to none of it was mentioned onscreen.
• Almost-Dead Guy: Stephen Petrov in "Chrysalis".
• Always a Bigger Fish: ... no, seriously. Earth thought the Minbari were out of their league. Then they met the Vorlons. Then they met the First Ones. And then they met the Thirdspace Aliens.
• Always on Duty: An early episode made an attempt to avert this with a throwaway line referencing a Lieutenant Commander who ran the night watch, but that character is never seen, and is never mentioned again. When we do see Command and Control during the night shift, it is usually being run by Commander Ivanova and Lieutenant Corwin.
  • The second season premiere had Captain Sheridan in C&C during the night shift, giving his ritualistic "Good Luck" speech to an empty room, suggesting that nobody was on duty when the heroes weren't. Several years later, they established that there was another Command & Control on the station, which could presumably run things when the primary was offline for some reason.
• American Customary Measurements: The station is consistently described as five miles long. However, The Metric System Is Here to Stay as well, especially when the Earth military is giving space distances.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: The episode "Passing Through Gethsemane".
• Amnesiacs Are Innocent: The episode "Passing Through Gethsemane".
• Analogy Backfire: From "Hunter, Prey":

Franklin: Michael, you ever consider climbing out of the barracks sometime and looking around at the world, huh? Garibaldi: Yeah, I will, when people stop shooting at me.

• Ancient Astronauts:
  • The Vorlons spent quite a bit of time imprinting themselves as Gods/Angels and a fear of the Shadows in all of the "Younger Races".
    • Except maybe the Centauri. It's never completely clear whether Londo's failure to see Kosh in "The Fall of Night" is due to a lack of indoctrination in this regard, or if his association with the Shadows has caused this.
  • The fear of the Shadows is directly the fault of the Shadows themselves. They seem to find it useful, and every time that they awaken go out of their way to learn what they can use to frighten and mindscrew the younger races with.
  • Also, a first season episode shows that an alien race (the Vree), who look a lot like The Greys, did indeed abduct humans in UFOs. Word of God is that the Vree can't understand why humans make such a fuss out of perfectly ordinary scientific research.
• And Man Grew Proud: The monks portion of Deconstruction of Falling Stars, which itself was an unconscious a blatant homage to A Canticle for Leibowitz.
• And Starring: "with Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar and Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari".
• And Then What?: Inverted in the episode "Signs and Portents". Mr Morden asks Narn Ambassador G'Kar "What do you want?" G'Kar replies that his closest-held wish is to see all the Centauri — the former oppressors of the Narn — exterminated, to which Morden then asks, "And Then What?" G'Kar is at a loss, and responds that "as long as my homeworld is safe, I don't see that it matters". ...And this is what causes Morden to pass him over.
• And This Is For: In "Born to the Purple":

Londo: That is for Adira. And this is for me.

• Angel Unaware: Subverted with Kosh, who cryptically remarks that if he open his encounter suit, he will be recognized by "everyone". When he finally does remove the suit, Kosh takes the image of a "being of light", a divine being whose appearance changes according to the different races who behold him — all save Londo Mollari, who sees nothing.
• Anti-Mutiny: Attempted by Boggs, along with a handful of other Nightwatch members who eluded Sheridan's roundup ("Ceremonies of Light and Dark").
  • Also attempted by Captain McDougan's second in command in No Surrender, No Retreat, complete with B5's version of a Click Hello. He is dragged to the ground and restrained by the rest of the bridge crew.
• Anything But That: Garibaldi ear-pulling an officer into helping him steal a mail package.

Garibaldi: What are you so nervous about? We went up against the entire Earth Alliance and two carrier groups. Security Officer: Yeah, but this is the post office!

• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: "Minbari do not kill Minbari." Yeah., but it was the only thing that saves Humanity in the Earth-Minbari War.
  • Despite this thousand year tradition, the Minbari do have a tradition of dueling to the death. This contradiction is explained in one of the books by saying that if you agree to participate in denn'Sha, you take responsibility for your death upon yourself if you lose. This technically makes all deaths by dueling acts of suicide, which don't count.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Class 1 depicted in The Deconstruction of Falling Stars. As well as what might well be a Class X-2 at the end of the same episode.
  • An alien species falls victim to a class 3b thanks to a disease with 100% lethality. Franklin discovers a cure too late to save them.
  • And then there's the Vorlon and Shadow planet killers, respectively Class X and Class 5.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Particularly egregious in the first few seasons. When Delenn and Kosh warn the main characters about an ancient evil arising to threaten all intelligent life in the galaxy and how it was all foretold in the Minbari religion, they tend to be taken seriously. When G'Kar says literally the exact same thing, backed up by the fact that he personally flew to one of their worlds and saw them with his own eyes and the fact that this evil is described in detail along with illustrations in Narn religious texts that match up perfectly with the characters' own eyewitness experiences, he's typically laughed at or ignored.
  • Probably because it's, well, G'Kar. Up until this point, all he's done is scheme and undermine the peace. He's a known agitator — just because he happens to be telling the truth this time, presumably it doesn't mean his latest attempt to stir up trouble for the sake of his own agenda will be believed. Delenn is more trustworthy, and Kosh commands a lot of attention due to the whole mystique-of-the-Vorlons thing.
  • Delenn and Kosh told Sheridan to keep knowledge of the Shadows secret so they would have enough time to build up their opposition. They intentionally feigned ignorance or disinterest when G'Kar, the Markab ambassador, and Earth Force investigator David Endawi openly mentioned or inquired about them. When G'Kar was finally brought into the Conspiracy of Light, Delenn profusely apologized for not being able to support him at the time and prevent the Centauri devastation of the Narn homeworld.
• Arc Words: Used liberally in every arc and season.
  • Arc Number: 1000, the number of years since the last Shadow war (whose years is never mentioned)
• Are We Getting This?: Invoked in "And Now For A Word", when ISN reporter Cynthia Torqueman captures rare footage of a Vorlon (Kosh).
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • "Who are you?" and "What do you want?". Also "Where are you going?" and "Why are you here?", if less often. The former two are asked by the Vorlons and the Shadows respectively, while the last two are referred to as "the human questions". It is implied that the Shadows and Vorlons have somewhat missed the point.

Sheridan: What do you want!? Kosh: Never ask that question! Sheridan: Well, at least I got a response out of you.

• • Lorien, being even older than the Vorlons and Shadows, asks two questions that are in a way deeper: "Why are you here?" and "Do you have anything worth living for?"
  • "Why am I alive?" probably rates this status too, even if it wasn't intended to be armor-piercing at the time.
• Armor-Piercing Slap: Knowing that Talia won't scan a suspect's mind without his legal consent, Sherdian arranges for her and Morden to pass each other in a corridor. The result is...less than pleasant. Afterward Talia refuses to dignify Sheridan's half-baked apology with even a single word, instead whacking him in the face and leaving.
  • What's more, Andrea Thompson actually slapped Bruce Boxleitner in the face in that scene. That wasn't scripted, and neither was Bruce's response.
• Arranged Marriage: The usual Centauri marriage is arranged for the advantage of the family, without reference to the preferences of the being-married. "The War Prayer" features a young Centauri pair who want to marry each other for love, as well as the first mention of Londo's three wives, all from arranged marriages, who he credits with his success as a diplomat (as in: the more successful his diplomatic career, the more excuse he has to spend long periods away from home).
  • The Psi Corps also practices the bureaucracy-driven version of this trope with the goal of breeding progressively more powerful telepaths.
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving
• Artifact of Death: The life force transfer machine.
• Artificial Gravity: Certain alien species such as the Minbari have this advanced technology. Not equipped on Earth ships, which instead rely on rotating parts to generate the force of gravity.
  • The Earth Alliance gains artificial gravity technology in return for endorsing the Interstellar Alliance at the end of the fourth season. We don't see any of the products of this until the TV movie A Call to Arms and the spinoff Crusade, however.
  • The Narn lack artificial gravity, and are shown to strap themselves in aboard their ships with five-point harnesses.
  • It was stated both in series and by Word of God that Artificial Gravity is a side-effect of the gravitic drives advanced races use, and the Minbari seem to be the only younger race that has gravitics on their fighters (along with Beam Spam weaponry that can cut an Earther heavy cruiser in half, making them quite the Lightning Bruiser). Of course, the Minbari were fighting interstellar wars when the humans thought the most advanced warship was the one you could fit a lot of archers on.
  • Centari cap ships appear to have artificial gravity, as seen by the shot of Londo standing on the deck of one as it bombs Narn back to the stone age
• Artistic License: In the DVD audio-commentary for several episodes, JMS makes repeated mentions of what he terms "TV moments." These are events that he admits should not have happened, primarily when one of the command staff decides to go join the fighter squadron in combat in defiance of almost all accepted military doctrine and wisdom, but which he put into the show for dramatic or emotional purposes. He accepts that they might not make logical sense, but he does not apologize, as they made for a better show.
• As the Good Book Says...: The Vorlon Inquisitor citing the story of Jonah and the whale.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • Jason Ironheart
  • The First Ones who "go beyond the Rim"
  • Also, Sheridan in "Sleeping in Light".
  • The entire human race by the end of Deconstruction of Falling Stars
• Ass in Ambassador: All of the ambassadors have their moments. Londo and G'Kar have more than most.
• Ass Shove: How Sheridan hides his link when he goes to confront a mad bomber in early season 3.

Garibaldi: Turn it up high enough, and we'll be able to tell what you had for lunch.

• The Atoner:
  • Delenn and Londo. Londo is more directly responsible for what he has to atone for, but Delenn is far less cynical.
  • "King Arthur" in A Late Delivery From Avalon
• Author Appeal: JMS seems to be a big baseball fan.
• Author Tract: Quite a few first and second season episodes.

B

• Backhanded Apology: Sheridan to the Centauri, in truely epic style.

Sheridan: I apologize. I'm... sorry. I'm sorry we had to defend ourselves against an unwarranted attack. I'm sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people. And I'm sorry I waited as long as I did before I blew them all straight to hell! As with everything else, it's the thought that counts.

• Badass Army: The Anla'Shok aka the Rangers. They're pretty damn awesome and badass, a mix between Ace Pilots and Jedi but they're so badass they don't need special powers.
• Badass Boast

Delenn: Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.

• • Ivanova did one even better:

Ivanova: "Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova. Commander. Daughter of Andrei and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart! I am Death Incarnate, and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me." Ivanova: On your trip back, I'd like you to take the time to learn the Babylon 5 mantra: "Ivanova... is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova... is God. And, if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out!" Babylon Control out. and from Season 1: when a reporter is bothering Sinclair, Ivanova steps in front of her and says "Don't. You're too young to experience that much pain." The reporter wisely does not test her on it.

• • G'Kar keeps up:

G'Kar: "No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by the force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power governments, and tyrants, and armies can not stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free." G'Kar: [to an arms dealer] "The money to buy these weapons comes from the life savings of those Narn who were able to escape the Centauri occupation. It is a limited resource, purchased with blood. If it should be squandered or stolen... be assured that while your body might one day be found, it could never be identified from what's left."

• • Surprisingly, Vir in the season 2 episode "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum":

Vir: "What do I want? I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

• • • Morden can't, but Londo can
      • Fridge Brilliance: Londo is one of Mr. Morden's associates! And Morden certainly played his part.
  • Marcus explaining to a group of lowlifes why they should answer his questions:

Marcus: "Because if you don't, then in five minutes I'll be the only person at this table still standing. Five minutes after that, I'll be the only person in this room still standing. So, who's in?"

• • • And Marcus is right, but leads to the unfortunate consequence of having no one awake to question. "Ah bugger, now I have to wait for one of them to wake up!"
  • Ivanova to a Drazi ship that is making threats:

"Vakar Ashok, our gun arrays are now fixed on your ship. They will fire the instant you come into range. You will find their power most impressive…for a few seconds."

• Badass Creed:
  • "Never start a fight, but always finish it."
  • "We are Rangers. We walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge, and no one may pass. We live for the One, we die for the One."
• Badass Israeli / General Ripper: While not precisely a member of the IDF, Colonel Ari Ben-zayn from the first-season episode "Eyes" is a cold, paranoid EarthForce intelligence operative with a life story strongly reminiscent of the sort of ex-IDF troops who become Mossad agents. He also says he got the scar on his face serving in the front lines of many battles, including some place called New Jerusalem.
  • ...who speaks with an English accent, making him also an Evil Brit.
  • Garibaldi calls him Ari Ben-Hitler at one point. Ben-zayn is being that unpleasant, and two, the only remotely Israeli thing about him is his name.
• Badass Preacher: Aldous Gajic from the episode "Grail". The dude not only takes on a bunch of guys, wielding guns, by kicking the crap out of them with a giant stick, but also talks down a mind-raping alien monster right before he takes a bullet for a guy he only just met. The guy is Badass, to say the least. And he's played by David Warner.
• Bad Vibrations: In "Mind War", the first mindquake topples a cup of water a character has just poured.
• Bald of Awesome: Michael Garibaldi. Also every Badass of every species that doesn't have hair.
  • As well as Brother Theo.
• Bald of Evil:
  • Sheridan's torturer.
  • Pvt. Kleist.
• Bald Women: Unlike Centauri males, whose hair fans are indicative of their social standing, women in their culture typically hold no status and symbolically shave their heads (save for the occasional ponytail).
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: When Earthforce opens a gift shop on the station, Londo is outraged to discover that a "Londo Mollari" doll is being sold there. Not because they used his image without his permission, but because it isn't anatomically correct. He feels he's being symbolically cast-- in a bad light.
• Bastardly Speech: In his televised interview, Londo disputes G'Kar's claims that the Centauri are smuggling weapons through Babylon 5 to kill Narns. He goes on to dismiss allegations of Centauri's enslavement of Narn as malicious "propaganda", claiming that his people wanted to help modernize the Narn and raise their standard of living, and left the planet voluntarily when the Narn proved too attached to their savage ways ("And Now For A Word").
• Batman Gambit: Mr. Bester's manipulation of Garibaldi.
  • Morden turning Londo against Refa in order to make him come to Morden for support
• Bar Brawl:
  • What happens when a horny idiot makes the mistake of approaching a drunk Ivanova and calling her "cute".
  • Or when Londo and Lennier go play poker but he gets caught cheating.
  • Or when a Starfury pilot accidentally backs into a Jerkass marine.
  • Or when an ISN report blares news of the Centauri Republic's occupation of the Narn homeworld... in a bar which is coincidentally packed with Centauri and Narns.
  • Or when Marcus Cole walks into one of the roughest bars on the station and announces that they're going to tell him what the Nightwatch did with the Minbari ambassador — or else.
  • Or when a freshly-drugged Sheridan realizes he’s fallen for Garibaldi’s trap to turn him in to EarthForce.
• Bash Brothers: G'Kar is so impressed with Arthur's gallantry against a pack of lurkers, he immediately jumps down from a balcony to join the fight. The pair get drunk afterward, and Arthur promptly "knights" G'Kar with his sword.
• Batman Gambit: Babylon 5 likes this trope, then again it is part political intrigue.
  • Sheridan sends a White Stars to do nonsensical/suicidal things to accomplish objectives that can only happen if others react the way he expects.
    • In the Shadow War he orders a suicide attack to plant intelligence to lure the Shadows to the site of the Final Battle. If the Shadows hadn't come the ship that was lost would be a Senseless Sacrifice.
    • He orders three White Stars to go to an asteroid field and attack it. He then plants the completely true story that nothing of note happened there on the Voice Of The Resistance. This makes the ambassadors to various factions paranoid that there is an invisible threat that only White Stars have sensors that are able to detect it. They then go to Sheridan and demand he assign patrol their borders to protect traders against Space Pirates. Sheridan had tried the more direct approach earlier in the episode but was refused, causing him to resort to a more complex method.
  • Londo's elimination of Lord Refa.
• Battle Butler:
  • Lennier and Na'toth, when necessary.
  • Vir, when least expected.
  • Ta'Lon and G'Kar, whether you want them to be or not.
• The Battlestar
  • Most ships are shown to at least be capable of carrying fighters, but only a few of the biggest ones are shown to carry them in large numbers. The name the humans use for this type of ship is Destroyer, a name which is adopted by the Interstellar Alliance for their new class of warships.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: The rescue of Sheridan from Clark's goons involved Garibaldi donning his old Earth Force uniform and walking into the prison under the pretense of being sent (off the record, of course) to interrogate Sheridan.
• Beard of Evil: Kalain, a rare Minbari example.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Londo REALLY should have put a bit more thought into his answer to the question "What do you want?"
• Because Destiny Says So: The eerily-accurate prophecies of Valen. (With a fairly significant Prophecy Twist at one point.)
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The Vorlon Inquisitor, aka Jack the Ripper.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Franklin, the poster boy for analytical logic, is beleaguered by alien cultures who hold dim views on medicine and/or interpret illness as divine judgment.
  • Later on in the show, Garbaldi accuses Franklin of this when the latter explains that he's aimlessly wandering the station to "find himself," a practice his particular religion borrowed from Australian Aborigines.
• Beneath the Mask: Amusingly but painfully when Delenn shows she has trouble with washing hair and cramps and other ills that epic heroines are not supposed to have. Lennier shows it all the time; his shyness and lack of self-confidence makes his "honorable minbari" mask seem to fit on clumsily in his day to day life and you get the feeling he is reciting formulas to convince himself. Except when he is doing something really Badass, of course.
• Berserk Button:
  • Be very careful what you ask a Vorlon.
  • Never hide surveillance devices in Vir's shopping.
  • Don't insult Delenn when Lennier is present.
  • Don't tell Ivanova she's cute.
  • Don't kidnap Delenn when Marcus is around. And if you do, do not stab her in front of Sheridan.
  • Don't hurt someone Delenn cares about. The results might be unpleasant.
  • Don't talk trash about Marsies around Micheal Garibaldi, especially if there is ongoing violence happening there and he doesn't know if a former lover of his is alive or dead.
  • Do not invade Lennier's personal space when he's worried sick about Delenn.
  • Do not pull a colored sash off one Drazi and put it on another.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Vir:

"What do I want? I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

• • Lennier:

"Do not touch me in that fashion. We may sometimes look like you, but we are not ... you! Never forget that."

• • Delenn

He was the best of us... they struck without provocation, there was no reason... animals! Brutal! They deserve no mercy. Strike them down! Follow them back to their bases and kill them, all of them. All of them! No mercy!

• BFG: The Nova-class warships of Earth Alliance are armed with 18 immense twin turrets (a defunct site measured them as 41 meters wide and 85 long). Then there are two structures identical to the Omegas' mine launchers...
• Big Bad: It's somewhat harder to fully pinoint, but President Clark comes really close.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In the season three Wham! Episode "Severed Dreams": "Only one human captain has survived battle against the Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, BE SOMEWHERE ELSE!"
  • Again in season four's "Endgame": Sheridan orders the crippled Agamemnon to ram the defence platform, the only hope of preventing it from firing its particle cannon at Earth. Then the Apollo comes out of jump and shoots down the platform, the Agamemnon emerging triumphantly from the fireball.
• Big Good: Alternatively, Lorien or Sheridan.
  • According to the backstory, Humans managed to ingratiate themselves with most of the other races by moving in to help them win the Dilgar War.
• Bilingual Backfire:
  • In the third season episode Ceremonies of Light and Dark, Delenn and a Red Shirt Minbari captain get kidnapped and tied up. Speaking to each other in Minbari, the captain mentions to Delenn that he thinks his ropes are loose. One of the kidnappers leans forward from nowhere and says "Then I guess I'd better tighten them." He explains a moment later that he learned their language during the war.
  • Another Minbari example: While Ivanova is out looking for First Ones with Lorien, she attempts to give an order to her Minbari crew, despite not being able to speak the language very well. In frustration, she says "Ah Hell," which in Minbari, apparently means "Keep Firing."
• Bio Augmentation: Two characters get gills implanted in their necks, allowing them to breathe in atmospheres where their species normally can't.
• Black Dude Dies First: Ray Galus in "A Distant Star" is one of those unfortunate not-thinking-things-through examples. Casting a black dude as a character in a position of authority is good. When it's a character who only appears to be killed off so a (white) recurring character can be promoted to that position... not so good.
• Black Shirt:
  • The Night Watch. Got more sinister as the series went on.
  • Politdivision Central, the future anti-ISA faction from "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"
• Bland-Name Product: Universe Today, a spoof of USA Today. (Also an aversion of No-Paper Future.)
• Blessed with Suck: a small percentage of telepaths are also telekinetic. Unfortunately, three-quarters of those telekinetics are clinically insane.
  • Not to mention the regular human telepaths being required to join the Psi Corps, take mind-dulling drugs, or face imprisonment. Along with the social stigma caused by being potentially able to read others thoughts, whether they want to or not.
• Bling of War:
  • The Centauri. Dear God, the Centauri.
  • Also to a lesser extent the Humans, the Narn, and the Minbari Warrior Caste.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Security Guard #1, aka the Nightwatch liaison hovering around Zack.
• Blondes Are Evil: Julie Musante, a stooge sent by the Ministry of Peace ("Voices of Authority").
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The three telepaths, Talia, Ivanova, and Lyta.
• Blood Oath: Whenever a Narn "Shon-kar" is declared, the head of the family is honor-bound to see it through. Should that relative lose their life beforehand, the responsibility passes down to the next in line.
  • Na'Toth's family swore a blood oath against the war criminal Jha'dur.
  • Lyndisty, daughter of an infamous Centauri officer, is targeted for Shon-kar by a surviving relative ("Sic Transit Vir").
  • A Shon-kar is always personal. That is it is not war, nor it is it vendetta. You take a Shon-kar because you actually do not like someone. That is why the question of why someone would want to hurt Vir is relevant; there are plenty of Narn who might want to do so just because he is Centauri, but none who would do so because he is Vir. As a matter of fact it is Lyndisty who was the target and Vir was simply standing in the assassin's way like a proper gentleman and he did not know that she had personally dispatched several Narn and thought no more of it then a fisherman does when he brains a fish.
• Blood on These Hands
• Blue and Orange Morality: An almost literal example in "The Geometry of Shadows". Every five years, the rulership of the Drazi is race is determined by every Drazi in the galaxy dividing up between two factions, called "Purple" and "Green", and fighting it out. "Purple" and "Green" are not representative of any ideology, nationality, ethnicity, or religion. They're just abstract colors. And no Drazi decides which side he wants to be on. They literally pick colored scarfs out of a barrel to determine affiliation. And they are genuinely flummoxed at Ivanova's inability to grasp the logic behind this system.
  • To make it even more bizarre, the leader of each faction is the one who pulls a sash with a little badge on it.
  • The First Ones. We are to them as ants are to us. They have no interest whatsoever in the affairs of the "young races" and will often destroy their ships simply because they hadn't noticed their presence.
    • Except for the Vorlons and Shadows, First Ones that take entirely too much interest in the young races
• Bluff the Eavesdropper: Londo discovers a listening device in a bag of groceries from a Drazi grocer. He spends a few moments saying several insulting things about the Drazi ambassador's wife under the pretense of not knowing he was being recorded, before smashing the bug.
• Body Horror:
  • Nelson Drake being taken over by an organic virus, eventually turning into a hulking monster (he got better).
  • Bester's ex-girlfriend, and the other telepaths abducted by the Shadows.
  • Anyone unfortunate enough to come under the sway of a Keeper.
• Book Ends: In the first season, Garibaldi is shown reading the newspaper, and says disgustedly "lousy Dodgers." He does the same thing in the very last episode.
  • In the first pilot, G'Kar goes to Lyta and asks her for her body to try and produce telepathic Narns. The last episodes, she decides to take up this offer with a few more details added to the deal.
• Bottle Episode: Often used, since it was set primarily on a space station.
• Boxing Episode: Walker Smith ("TKO") used to be a prize fighter on Earth until he refused to take a dive. Now blacklisted, Smith travels to B5 to enter the Mutai, a brutal fighting competition among aliens of all races and oh I wouldn't dream of giving away the shocking surprise ending.
• Break-In Threat: An assassin leaves a black flower in Ambassador G'Kar's bed, as a warning that he has been targeted by the assassins' guild.

G'Kar: And you have no idea how that [black flower] got into my bed? Na'Toth: Ambassador, it is not my place to speculate on how anything gets into your bed. Your reputed fascination with Earth women, for instance...

• Break the Cutie: Lyta, especially in Season 5.
• Break the Haughty: Both Londo and G'Kar, in their own ways, and probably leading to their Odd Friendship. At the beginning of the series, both are arrogant, uppity ambassadors, and can be quite unlikable. Then, as calamity after calamity hits G'Kar and success after success hits Londo, both come to realize what is truly important. It's quite possibly the best-managed depiction of Character Development in TV science fiction, ever.
• Breather Episode: Lampshaded by Sheridan in "Sic Transit Vir".
• Brick Joke:
  • All unanswered questions. All of them.
  • Vir, getting his wish (Morden's head on a pike) does exactly as he said he would several seasons earlier.
  • At the beginning of the series when Delenn first meets Lennier, she asks him to look her in the eyes and he says it is disrespectful to do so, but she replies "I cannot have an aide who will not look up". Late in the fourth season, a flashback to many years before when Delenn was first appointed as the great Minbari leader Dukhat's aide shows them having this same exact exchange.
• The Bridge: C&C, or Command and Control, is the station's equivalent to this. The White Star is a more traditional example.
• Broad Strokes: "The Gathering" is only mostly canon.
  • One big example of this is Delenn. In "The Gathering," her makeup is markedly different from how it looks in the first season, making her look rather androgynous. Word of God is that originally she was meant to be male, and that her transformation at the beginning of Season 2 would include turning her female. This was dropped when it was deemed too difficult to do (for one, they couldn't figure out a way to convincingly make Mira Furlan's voice sound masculine).
• Burial in Space
• Bury Your Gays: In every way that matters, Talia Winters, who was dating (and eventually sharing quarters with) Susan Ivanova, was killed when her "sleeper" personality was activated. Ivanova later confesses to Delenn that she believes she loved Talia. It should be noted that the relationship was to be explored more thoroughly if the actress playing the former hadn't left the series.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: The Psi Corps arranges marriages between powerful telepaths in order to facilitate the breeding of even more powerful telepaths. If the people involved try to refuse, the Corps is perfectly willing to arrange rapes instead.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Sinclair in "War Without End".
  • Lyta as well, though Sinclair's example was more dramatic.
• But You Screw One Goat!

Ivanova: Well, you know how I feel about telepaths. Sheridan: Do I ever. You threw one out of a third story window on Io. Ivanova: There was an ample pool below the window! Sheridan: I'll assume you knew that.

• • No wonder Londo's nicknames for his wives are "Famine", "Pestilence", and "Death":

Timov: I won't bite, Vir. Vir: With all due respect, Madame, that's not what I've heard. Timov: All right, that one time! Vir: Twice.

C

• Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: Garibaldi goes on a mission to the Drazi homeworld, where he meets a human friend working as a bodyguard. He tells Garibaldi that rich aliens hire human bodyguards as a status symbol.
• The Caligula: Centauri Emperor Cartagia.
• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: According to G'Kar, every sentient race has a dish that, regardless of its name (the Narn call theirs Breen), is just like Swedish meatballs. He says this after another Narn visiting him, who was eating Swedish meatballs, asked how he managed to get "breen" imported from the Narn homeworld, which is under Centauri occupation.
• The Cavalry: Following an intense battle against Clark's forces in which the station was badly damaged and a friendly destroyer lost, Sheridan finally breathes a sigh of relief and asks for a status report — right before a fresh wave of reinforcements appear through the jumpgate. It seems like all is lost. Then four more jump points materialize around the station, followed by three Minbari warships and the White Star, all under the command of Delenn.
• Camera Abuse: B5's numerous, independent "Securecams" floating around the hull. We see a few of them get trashed during a skirmish between Narn and Centauri ships ("And Now For a Word").
  • A few of the space battles later on even show us a Starfury pilot's eye view of his impending death due to incoming fire or mid-space collisions (Fall of Night and Into the Fire)
• Camp Straight: The Centauri nobleman appointed as Regent after Londo and Vir assassinate the Emperor. To the point that his first act in office is to begin redesigning the Imperial Palace's decor...in pastels.
  • This troper can't recall anything in the series itself or any of the supplementary material indicating the Regent's sexuality one way or the other.
  • The Regent hints at one point that his foppish manner is an act he affected to make him seem less of a threat to the rest of the Imperial Court.
• Can You Hear Me Now?:
  • While investigating Grey Sector, Sheridan's comm signal starts breaking up ("Knives").
  • In one episode a character loses his communicator. He finds another person's communicator, but can't use it to call for help, because the communicator will only work for its owner. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, all mobile phones can be used to call the emergency number, even without SIM cards.
    • Well, given that they're military comm devices, letting just anyone use them in an emergency would be a great way to let in misinformation, or let enemies use the comms of captured characters to spam the comm net to death. When you look at it that way, the issue doesn't look like such a bad misfeature anymore.
    • Indeed, in more than one episode, this sort of thing happens — a villanous character obtains a link and uses advanced technology to hack into the system. It's a pretty intelligent safety feature, really.
    • And of course, in the episode where a character is trying to call security on someone else's comm link, it won't let him make the call. But it does ping Security to report the stolen comm, resulting in pretty much exactly what the character was trying to accomplish.
• Can't Hold His Liquor:
  • The Minbari, who are turned crazy by alcohol. A bit of an Informed Ability, as it's never actually shown in the show.
  • Vir's intolerance for alcohol is a Running Gag in the series. In one episode he swallows Londo's drink and passes out. Londo, who is a borderline alcoholic (especially in the first season), is constantly disgusted by it.
  • The only way for Londo to temporarily shake free of his Drakh Keeper is to get drunk; it passes out before he does, so he can have a little time not under its terrifying control.
• Cannon Fodder:
  • Both the Vorlons and the Shadows use entire races as Cannon Fodder.
  • During the Earthforce assault on B5, we see the Narn reinforcements being picked off by the dozens.
    • It's rather self-inflicted. The Narns aggresively charge into the fight, ignoring Garibaldi's instructions to take up defensive positions.
• Canon Discontinuity / Canon Immigrant- Word of God holds the early Dell B5 novels as a pick-and-choose-your-canon affair, barring To Dream in the City of Sorrows and the Anna Sheridan plot of The Shadow Within, which are canon. The later novels and most of the comics are 100% canon.
• Captain's Log: Used occasionally, with not only the Captain's Log, but also Commander Ivanova and Dr. Franklin's personal logs.
• The Cassandra: G'Kar was specifically described as such by Word of God back when the show was on. Subverted in that others (notably the Mimbari and Vorlons) knew of the coming threat, but had to conceal that knowledge because they were not prepared to face the shadows yet
• Catapult Nightmare: Ivanova walking onto the command deck in her birthday suit.
• Cat Scare: During Lyta's hunt for the Manchurian Agent aboard B5, Lyta takes turns scanning the minds of the entire crew. When Garibaldi's turn comes up, he doubles over and grips his head in pain... then grins at everyone's stunned reactions. Very funny, Garibaldi.
• Cats Are Mean: The Dilgar, a races that exemplifies Blood Knight and Complete Monster.
  • While we only hear the last part of it, Sheridan tells Delenn a story that seems to be about a friend's cat tearing up his place.
• The Chains of Commanding: Turhan never chose to be Emperor; he was born into the role. When he ascended the throne, the Centauri Republic was embroiled in a brutal occupation of Narn. By virtue of his position, Turhan caught heat for atrocities that were already set in motion by his family (so much so that G'Kar even tries to assassinate him). Near the end of his life, Turhan confides the irony that despite his vast power, he never really had a "choice" in much of anything. Londo gets a taste of this for himself once he allies with Morden.

Londo: Five years ago I had no power, but all the choices I could wish. Now I have all the power, but no choice.

• Chair Reveal: Captain Sheridan is introduced via a meta-Chair Reveal; it's not a reveal for any character in the scene, only for the audience.
• Challenging the Chief: G'kar faces several attempts to depose him as the series goes on, all by his own people.
• Character Aged with the Actor
• Characterization Marches On: In the pilot movie and the early episodes of Season 1, G'Kar is a recurring villain, while Londo is the Plucky Comic Relief and often an Unwitting Pawn.
• Character Shilling: For Captain Lochley by admitted author avatars.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The cruiser G'Tok, which in the Season 2 finale plays the passive role of a damaged ship seeking shelter at B5 to lick their wounds, comes back in a Season 3 episode to return the favor to the heroes in a Gunship Rescue.
• Chekhov MIA: Anna Sheridan.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The alien healing device.
• The Chessmaster: A lot of the characters go in for this, but the prize goes to the Vorlons and Shadows who have been playing chess for millions of years, at an infinite level above even Gary Kasporov with us as the pawns.
• Child Marriage Veto: "The War Prayer" has this with a couple of Centauri, each arranged to marry someone else, but wanting to marry each other.
• The Chosen One: Masterfully executed, even though the character they were setting up for that role got Absentee Actor'ed. This was retconned into him being one of three The Ones.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Even at 1800 years old, "King Arthur" can still kick some ass. He chivalrously beats up a lurker for robbing a destitute old lady in Downbelow.
• Church Militant: In the third season the Minbari religious caste seems far more warlike then the warrior caste.
  • That's because they have Delenn.
• City of Spies: Babylon 5. At the least a city of political intrigue, which is hard to carry on without spies.
  • Londo at one point mentions that, at the very least, he and G'Kar have spies. We never see them, which means they're good spies.
• The City Narrows: The Downbelow on Babylon 5 itself which adds to the atmosphere of B5 being an urban centre as much as a space station.
• Cliff Hanger: Used sparingly, which is surprising given the context of other Myth Arc based shows spawned by this one.
• Closed Circle: Delenn and Lennier offering aid to the Markab during the Drafa outbreak. Due to the quarantine, the pair are effectively sealed inside Grey Sector for the duration of the pandemic.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Emperor Cartagia tortured G'Kar to the brink of death several times, not for punishment, not to gain information, but simply as an amusing diversion.
  • Boggs's accomplice is a shell-shocked veteran of the Earth-Minbari War. Described by Garibaldi as a "real psycho", he used to enjoy ordering Minbari POWs to dig their own graves. He also claims to have once taken seven days to kill a Minbari, by systematically amputating his extremities and limbs.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: The six branches of B5. Blue Sector consists of the station's entryways and command hub. Red comprises the commercial district, Green is the diplomatic area, Brown is the industrial sector, Gray the maintenance bay, and Yellow contains the station's fusion core.
  • The two types of Starfuries seen, the Aurora (space only, canopy like the nose of a WWII bomber) and the Thunderbolt (folding wings for atmosphere flying, two-seat jet-fighter style canopy), can be easily told apart in wide angle shots by their engines: Blue for the Aurora, Red for the Thunderbolt.
  • Not to mention Lyta's Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • Babylon 5 has a blue color scheme. Babylon 4 is shown to have a green color scheme, and the original incomplete Babylon Station had a red color scheme.
• Color-Coded Patrician:
  • The Emperor of the Centauri Republic wears all-white. All other Centauri wear various different colors.
  • The Grey Council of the Minbari wear...well...grey. Council members wear hooded grey robes during their deliberations (outside of the chamber, they wear what they wish).
• Combat By Self-Immolation: The means by which the Minbari chose their leaders in bygone days. It has rather waned in popularity for obvious reasons. Delenn was able to appeal to it simply because she was so Badass.
• Combat Medic: Dr. Franklin normally stays clear of the action, and at one point destroys his own research rather than let it be used as a weapon, but if he ends up in a fight, he can lay most mooks out with one or two well-placed kicks. He must have studied those anatomy textbooks to know the best places to hit.
• Comm Links: Earth Alliance's Hand links. Attached to the back of the users' hand via a molecular bonding material individually encoded to each user. Sounds awesome, but it can be hazardous if you're ever in danger and try calling security with someone else's commlink. Because this will cause security to be called.
• Communications Officer: On the station itself, this job would typically fall to Lieutenant Corwin (in the first season, it alternated between him and an un-named Bridge Bunny.) If Sheridan or Sinclair was in Command and Control, this job would instead go to Commander Ivanova. When traveling out and about aboard one ship or another, this job would fall to whichever character was serving as The Lancer for that mission (Lennier or Marcus, usually).
• Completely Missing the Point: When Vir is caught falsely registering thousands of Narn as dead, Londo heartily congratulates him on such a high body count. That is, until Vir confesses he merely smuggled the Narns out of Centauri space. Londo's warm smile is immediately replaced by a furrowed brow. They're alive? That's quite a different matter entirely!
  • Or Londo was simply worried about Vir putting himself in danger
• Completely Unnecessary Translator: Correlimurzon brings along his servitor, Taq, to speak for him until he cam decide whether humans are worthy of his esteemed presence. Talking directly with a "lesser species" constitutes a loss of face in his culture.
• Compressed Vice: The Minbari's extreme beliefs about honor in "There All the Honor Lies", which are never mentioned in any other episode and don't jibe with the way most Minbari characters actually behave.
• Computer Voice: Played for Laughs with "Sparky", a Jerkass AI (ably voiced by Harlan Ellison) who refuses to shut up.
  • The normal computer voice, which is very rarely heard, has a very flat, robotic sound to it.
• Contest Winner Cameo: Dr Lillian Hobbes
• Continuity Nod: The newspaper Garibaldi is seen reading in "And the Sky Full of Stars" has headlines relating to several events in recent episodes (as well as a sidebar Foreshadowing a major development later in the series).
  • At the end of "The Long Night", Sheridan recites a poem by Tennyson, which some unknown party had left a copy of on his desk before he first arrived to the station.
• Converging Stream Weapon: Vorlon ships have several booms on the front of the ship that each emitted a lightning bolt — like beam. They met in the middle to create a Wave Motion Tuning Fork effect.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • It could be said that Sinclair becomes a Cool Old Guy in "War Without End", after experiencing a number of age-altering effects from the time jumps that turn him grey and wrinkly in a matter of minutes, but still leave him with the ability to take Babylon 4 back to the distant past to kick some Shadow ass as Valen.
  • Lorien is older than he looks.
  • Brother Theo, in a somewhat irritating way.
• The Corruption: The alien bioweapon in "Infection".
• Cosmic Chess Game: Vorlons vs Shadows. Everyone else is a pawn.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Harlan Ellison, who is credited as a "conceptual consultant" on every episode and four of the movies, appears briefly as the Psi Cop who brainwashes Garibaldi in the episode "The Face of the Enemy".
  • JMS himself appears in the Grand Finale.
    • Before JMS knew he'd be putting himself in the Finale, he was quoted as saying, "I don't make cameos, my initials do." (Jeffrey Sinclair and John Sheridan both had the same initials as Joe Straczynski.)
      • In addition to that, the first initials of each of the main characters are each of Joe's initials: John, Michael, Susan/Stephen.
• Crucified Hero Shot: A mortally-wounded Brother Edward is strung up in this fashion somewhere in Downbelow.
  • Sheridan, when The Inquisitor gets his hands on him. "This is Hell, Captain, and you are its chief damned soul"
• Crystal Spires and Togas: The Minbari homeworld.
• Curb Stomp Battle: The Earth/Minbari War. The Minbari absolutely trounced the Humans at every battle. Earth won exactly one battle, and that was done by seeding the Asteroid Belt with nukes. And then...the Minbari surrendered on Earth's doorstep.
• Curb Stomp Cushion:
  • "The Long Twilight Struggle" features a Narn fleet getting slaughtered by a group of Shadow warships. It is some consolation that one of the Shadow warships ends up getting caught in the crossfire of two Narn cruisers and is crippled (if not destroyed).
  • Alluded to by Commander Sinclair when talking about his experience at the Battle of the Line, mentioning that he managed to shoot down a single enemy fighter, while his entire squadron was wiped out in the same engagement.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • "Born to the Purple":

Londo: Yes, and you can kiss my plump Centauri — ah! Gentlemen, this is what I've been waiting for!

• • All things considered, Sheridan takes the news of Earthforce charging him rent for using his quarters pretty well.

Sheridan: "They can take a flying f--!!"

• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Ivanova really dislikes telepaths. If there's any doubt on that subject, when Harriman Grey tries convincing her to go along with a mental scan, she threatens to "twist [his] head off and use it as a chamber pot."
  • Actually, Ivanova has nothing at all against telepaths, notably since her mother was one and she's a latent telepath herself. It's the Psi Corps she's got a big ol' hate boner for. It just so happens that most human telepaths are with the Corps.
• Cute Kids And Robots: Subverted several times, just to hammer home the fact that J. Michael Straczynski despised this trope. The trope name, in fact, comes from JMS's early GEnie posts about the B5 project. Also a subject of some annoyance for Straczynski, as he'd said the show would never have cute kids or robots as regulars, a la Wesley Crusher. Any time there were kids on the show at all, someone would inevitably throw this back at him. Never mind the fact that half the time, the kids died.
• Cyanide Pill: In "Points of Departure", a die-hard Minbari has one of the hollow-tooth variety, which he intends to use to arrange his own death apparently at human hands and thus spark a new Earth-Minbari war.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: See Cyborg, below.
• Cyborg / Psycho Electro: Abel Horn was posthumously recruited into the "Lazarus Project", leaving him little more than a reanimated corpse with no mind of it's own, as well as grafting a electric robot hand onto him (as seen in a Robotic Reveal).

D

• Dangerous Workplace
• Darkness Equals Death: Talia's assassination attempt on Lyta is signaled by the corridor's lights shutting off.
• Data Crystal
• Deadly Decadent Court: Two Words: The Centaurum.
• Dead Man Writing:
  • In "The Parliament of Dreams", G'Kar receives a message from an old enemy: "By the time you get this recording, I will already be dead... Ah, but then, very shortly, so will you."
  • Sheridan's message for Delenn in the episode "Z'ha'dum".
• Deal with the Devil: "What do you want?"
• Death by Origin Story: Many doubling as Take Up My Sword:
  • G'Kar's father worked as an indentured servant for a Centauri household during the Narn occupation. His mistress ordered him to be hung from a rope after he mistakenly spilled a hot beverage on her.
  • Aldous Gajic was originally an accountant for a major Earth corporation. At some point, he and his family took a vacation on Mars; While they were driving across the Amazonis Planitia, the ground gave way beneath them. Aldous awoke in the hospital to find that his wife and daughters had perished in the accident. He eventually returned to work, only to find that his job held no meaning for him anymore. It was then that Aldous encountered a staff-bearing monk who claimed to be the last of his kind--a seeker of the Holy Grail. When he lay dying, he passed his staff along to Aldous, who set off into space to find the Grail himself.
  • William Cole, the estranged brother of Marcus Cole, was recruited by Sinclair to join the Rangers in 2259. In April of that year, he returned to the mining colony where Marcus lived and tried to convince him to join, but Marcus did not believe his stories about the Shadows and was suspicious of what he saw as a Minbari cult. William later sent a warning about an imminent Shadow attack on the colony. Marcus was not on the colony at the time, and returned just in time to see his brother die. Blaming himself for the death of his brother, Marcus joined the Rangers to finish the work he had started.
  • Anna Sheridan was a researcher working for Interplanetary Expeditions. She signed on with an exploration mission to a newly discovered world out on the Galactic Rim. A mysterious accident destroyed the ship, killing the entire crew. Dealing with her death and learning to move on with his life is a major character arc for John Sheridan. Anna Sheridan did not die on Z'Ha'Dum. It may have been better for her if she had.
• Death Seeker: At 400+ years old, Sebastian has continually been put into stasis by the Vorlons, being revived only periodically to serve as their Inquisitor. During his departure from the station, he expresses the hope that the Vorlons will finally let him perish.
• Death's Hourglass:
  • Londo Mollari. From the first season we know that Centauri have prophetic dreams about their own deaths, that they know where and when they are going to die. In Londo's case his dream has him as an old man, twenty years from now (2258) with his hands at G'Kar's throat and vice-versa. He is very fatalistic about it. He indeed dies in 2278, although the context is somewhat different than he'd originally expected. (see "Prophecy Twist")
  • There's another person in the series who fits in the trope even better: Sheridan after dying in Z'ha'dum gains limited amount of life-force from Lorien, and from then on knows exactly how long he is going to live.
• Death World: Z'Ha'Dum
• Decapitation Presentation: Mr. Morden.
• Defector From Decadence:
  • Harriman Grey ("Eyes"), a Psi-cop interrogator who finally has his fill of Col. Ben Zayn's vindictive Witch Hunt.
  • "Rick", an ISN reporter, briefly hijacks the anchorman's desk to protest Earthgov's actions. The feed is quickly cut.
• Defensive Feint Trap: Sheridan's famed defeat of the Minbari flagship.
  • Sheridan was born lucky. In "Messages From Earth", he plunges the Whitestar deep into Jupiter as a Shadow ship — having gone berserk as a result of the human serving as its CPU — gives chase. The Whitestar bolts out of the atmosphere at just the right moment whilst the insane Shadow ship is unable to do so. The ship is pulled further into Jupiter's atmosphere where it is eventually destroyed.
  • This is Sheridan's preferred battle tactic. On the White Star's Maiden Voyage, he encounters and is pursued by a Shadow Battle Crab. Even though the White Star has jump engines, he pretends that they don't, since ships as small as the White Star usually have to rely on Jump Gates. This allows him to set up the conditions for his defeat of the Shadow vessel.
• Deflector Shields: The Thirdspace aliens have those. To get through the gate's shields from one side, the protagonists concentrate fire on the other side. Ironheart also whips one up using his Psychic Powers just before he goes all First One.
  • Most other groups rely on stealth or very effective use of point defenses.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: "The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father" is made of this. Even the seemingly sweet and perky Naive Newcomer has been conditioned to think nothing of tossing a sedated and helpless "mundane" out of an airlock and into hyperspace as punishment for killing a member of the Corps.
• Description Porn: For a 20th century Kawasaki motorcycle, of all things.
• Designated Victim: According to Word of God: Spoo. A mealworm-like herd animal whose primary activity is sighing, a sound which causes severe depression amongst other races. Their only redeeming quality is that they are delicious, and they are considered a delicacy amongst most civilized races.

"Spoo are the only creatures of which the Interstellar Animal Rights Protection League says, simply, 'Kill 'em.'"

• Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life: The Vindrizi were created be living recorders, passing their knowledge on to future civilizations in the event that all records are lost and the universe descends into a new dark age. The lurkers on B5 willingly subject themselves to bonding with these aliens, believing that they have finally found a purpose.
  • Both Delenn and Garibaldi say this of Sinclair during the first season. Eventually, he discovers his purpose: to go back in time and become the Minbari prophet Valen.
• Deus Ex Nukina: "Z'ha'dum." End of line.
• Devil but No God: There is cosmic evil but no cosmic good unless you count Lorien. The Vorlons, at first seem to be cosmic good but reveal that they are almost as bad as the Shadows and arguably more distasteful for pretending to be good. By contrast JRR Tolkien has cosmic good that is prevented from interfereing directly by the nature of the setting.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: the whole Shadow wars arc, basically.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: "Get the hell out of our Galaxy!", combined with Shut UP, Hannibal!
  • I'd hazard that the flipping off was the nuking the Vorlons & the Shadows, at the same time, at the same place. To wit, "Captain? They're pissed."
  • Not to mention Londo nuking a Shadow base on his own homeworld, and sticking their representative's head on a pike.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight:
  • In Season Three, Delenn reveals that the former Minbari regent, Dukhat, died in her arms.
  • Inverted with Marcus and Ivanova
• Diet Episode: The B-plot in "A Distant Star" involves Dr Franklin putting Sheridan, Ivanova and Garibaldi on food plans because they're not eating right.
• Disappointed in You: Sheridan to Garibaldi in "Wheel of Fire".
• Distant Finale:
  • "Sleeping in Light".
  • "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" is a Distant (Season) Finale, filmed to replace "Sleeping in Light" (which, as evidenced by its credits, was filmed during the fourth season) when the show was Uncanceled.
• Documentary Episode: "And Now for a Word"
• Documentary of Lies: The second half of "The Illusion of Truth."
  • The anti-ISA faction of Earthforce is working on one in one segment of The Deconstruction of Falling Stars. Their attempts get cut short when the facility preparing the video is bombed.
• Dogfighting Furballs: This happens fairly frequently, with actual Newtonian physics, no less! Though the heavier ships often steal the show.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Minbari Fighting Pike, a Simple Staff that collapses into a small cylinder about the size of your hand and grows rapidly when firmly shaken. Most prominently used by a virgin who says that playing with it helps him relax.
  • One of the characters is harboring a Dark Secret. One that she has kept even from her closest friends, and she believes they'll never forgive her when they find out. She's a Latent Telepath. The same episode also subtly reveals that she's bisexual, but that never gets addressed as an issue of concern for anyone.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!:
  • P.F.C. "Dodger" comes to Garibaldi looking for a one-night stand, and becomes annoyed when he mistakes her intentions as something more. After admitting that her next deployment may very well be a suicide mission, she rebuffs Garibaldi's attempts to console her and leaves.
  • Delenn's captor, having grown accustomed to the screams of tortured Minbari, is unamused when Delenn instead describes in minute detail what a pitiful, sad loony he is ("Ceremonies of Light and Dark").
• Downer Beginning: Season 3.

The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed.

• Downer Ending: Several episodes in the show have one. In Season 2 there are four such episodes in a row: Knives, Confessions and Lamentations, Divided Loyalties and The Long, Twilight Struggle.
  • Also of note, the first season had a Downer Ending (indeed, They completley fail to stop, or even largely to even detect The Conspiracy before they were able to achieve their goals.) The second and third seasons are Bitter Sweet Endings at best.
  • This is mainly because JMS feels even if the show ends, the story continues, so there are no real final endings, only the end of a part.
• Dream Sequence: Very effectively used in "Interludes and Examinations" and "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari"
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: According to Londo, all Centauri have a gift for predicting the manner of their own death. In the first episode, Londo predicts that he and G'Kar will end up strangling each other. Once Londo falls in league with Morden, the dream becomes more frequent; what's more, Londo now dreams of other things — such as his coronation as Emperor, and Shadow vessels flying over Centauri Prime. Following this, he becomes riddled with anxiety, purposely shunning opportunities to win prestige from the royal court.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty:
  • The Inquisitor.
  • Less metaphorically and more literally, the Sergeant Major in "Gropos". Slightly subverted near the end, when Dodger runs back to kiss Garibaldi; instead of hauling her off him and dressing her down viciously, the Sergeant Major just orders her back into line and gives him a knowing smile.
• Driven to Suicide: Garibaldi, very nearly after being shot In the Back and failing to stop the assassination of President Santiago. Sheridan enters and sees the gun laying on the table next to its holster.

Sheridan: The Universe doesn't give you any points for doing things that are easy.

• Driving Question: Season 1 only: What happened to Sinclair during the Battle Of The Line?
  • Who are you?
  • What do you want?
• Drinking on Duty: In Season 5, Garibaldi's drinking problem prevents him from informing Sheridan (or handling it properly) of Centauri ship movements before open warfare breaks out. A few episodes later, Sheridan discovers that Garibaldi is drunk on duty, and suspends him after a short discussion.
• Drunk on Milk: Vir.
• Duel to the Death: The "Marago", a jousting match between two honor-minded Centurai. In a last-ditch effort to save his family name, Urza challenges his former friend Londo, knowing he will not face the dishonor of refusing. Despite maintaining the upper hand, Urza allows Londo to run him through. As per Centauri custom, Urza's sacrifice results in his family being merged with House Mollari, sparing them a life of poverty and disgrace.
• Dueling Shows: With Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  • Somewhat justified, since JMS had pitched Babylon 5 to Paramount (who turned it down) a year before they announced the new Star Trek series "On a space station, near a portal allowing travel across the galaxy".
  • B5 made a little dig at Deep Space Nine in its second season:

Ivanova: "This isn't some deep-space franchise, this station is about something!"

• • • The writer of that episode, of course, was Peter David, who was also a prolific writer for the Star Trek Expanded Universe, and who wasn't afraid to take a good-natured dig at B5 while writing for Space Cases.
      • David was surprised, however, when JMS said that he intended on keeping the line in there as is. His exact words were "You people really are dangerous over there."
  • Lennier also manages to take a minor stab against Scotty, when Sheridan asks for more power to the engines: "If I were holding anything back, I would tell you." (When Scotty came back for an episode of TNG, he revealed that he would often hold back reserve power behind the captain's back, so he could turn the ship Up to Eleven when Kirk inevitably asked for more.)
  • Majel Barret guest starred in the third season as Lady Morella, the third wife to the late Centauri Emperor, as a means to quell the fan-anger between the shows.
  • Of course, the shows shared quite a few writers and guest actors between them, with one or two of the B5 cast appearing in guest roles on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine after B5's conclusion.
  • There are even similarities and parallels between the shows in theme and naming: the Roman Empire based Centauri and the Romulans, the deeply introspective and ascetic Minbari/Vulcans, the previously conquered and recently freed Narns / Bajorans & Klingons (the Narn are an interesting mix of Klingon warrior cult and Bajoran religious fanatics), the meddling and nearly omniscient Vorlons / Q, and the assimilating tyrannical inhuman Shadows / Borg. Of course, the most blatant parallel is the Minbari Leader Dukhat and the Cardassian leader Dukat.
• Dying Race: Several: the Narn, Centauri, and many of the 'First Races'.

E

• Eagle Squadron: The Rangers.
  • Also the Narn Security personnel starting around mid-third season.
• Early Installment Weirdness: The Pilot Movie uses different guns than the series uses, and the link is a wristwatch device instead of the rectangle they use for the main series. Also, Delenn's makeup.
• Earthshattering Kaboom, during the entire fourth season.
• Earth-That-Was: Inverted, once Earth is bombed back to the dark ages in the future, it's aliens and space travel, The Alliance, Sheridan, and the war of the third age that become myth.
• Easy Logistics: Averted. The station is shown to be highly dependent upon shipping traveling through the area for food, supplies, and money to pay for the operation and maintenance of the station. This becomes a major plot point after they declare independence from Earth, and are placed under an embargo.
  • Even coffee is mentioned as being prohibitively expensive, leading more than one officer to smuggle coffee plants aboard the station and placed in the hydroponics garden, reserved for producing oxygen and food for the station's population.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Thirdspace aliens. Nice going, Vorlons.
• Embarrassing Nickname: In "A Distant Star", Sheridan's first commanding officer, Captain Maynard, visits the station and we learn that his nickname for Sheridan is "Swamp Rat". Sheridan takes it well, because they're friends, and perhaps also because his nickname for Maynard is "Stinky".
• Emergency Presidential Address: In the Babylon 5 film In The Beginning, the president of Earth gives a sobering Do Not Go Gentle speech in which she pleads for combat-worthy ships to sacrifice themselves by holding the line in face of an imminent Minbari invasion, while the evacuation of civilians is underway.
  • And in Severed Dreams, Sheridan also addresses the station's population when Babylon 5 declares independence from the Earth Alliance.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Invoked by Londo when he's stuck in an elevator with G'Kar. Unfortunately for him, G'kar would rather watch him die than survive himself.

"As the Humans say, Up Yours!"

• • The Rangers literally wear this trope on their badges. It is an illustration of a human and Minbari, their arms intertwining around "the darkness" — their common enemy.
  • Played straight many other times, as various people and groups teamed up on different occasions to deal with more powerful common enemies, most notably Londo and G'Kar again in later seasons.
• Energy Weapons: PPG (Phased Plasma Gun) weapons. According to Word of God, PPGs fire bolts of energized, super-heated helium sheathed in an electromagnetic field and propelled by an opposed magnetic field. On impact, the projectile discharges its thermal and kinetic energy.
• Engineered Public Confession: Lennier coaxes one out of Ashan by threatening to claim responsibility for the latter's frameup of Sheridan.
  • Interestingly, the original ending as scripted was somewhat...different. Instead, Delenn simply told Ashan to explain things. And brought out her old gravity rings...
• Enforced Cold War: Kosh's role is to prevent Sheridan from making a move against the Shadows too quickly, as they are still marshaling their forces. If the Shadows' existence was suddenly made known, they would swarm the galaxy before Earthforce was prepared to face them.
• Enforced Method Acting: In Severed Dreams, we see an ISN Newscast get cut short when an explosion rocks the building. Debris can be seen landing on the newsdesk, with the anchors crying out in fear. The debris wasn't supposed to land that close to the actors, and their reaction to almost having it land on their heads was genuine.
  • In In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, Sheridan tricks Talia into walking past Morden in the hopes that she'll pick up something. She does, and the event is so traumatic she ends up in Medbay. When Sheridan comes in to apologize, she slaps him and storms off. Andrea Thompson, the actress who played Talia, got herself so worked up for the scene that she didn't pull her punch, and really slapped Bruce Boxleitner as hard as she could. His reaction to the slap was genuine.
• Equal Opportunity Evil: Nightwatch. Many members sign up primarily based on the extra 50 credits a week that would be added to their regular paycheck.
• Eternal Engine: The Great Machine of Epsilon III. Its precursors deemed it too dangerous to fall into the hands of lesser races, and set a Doomsday Device to destroy the planet if anyone tries to meddle with it.
• Evil Brit: The interrogator in "And the Sky Full of Stars", played by professional Evil Brit Christopher Neame.
  • As Sebastian, from Comes The Inquisitor. Of course, being an Evil Brit is unavoidable when you're Jack the Ripper.
• Evil Evolves: The Lumati believe in a strict adherence to natural selection, to the point of frowning upon medical treatment performed on "lesser races". Their ambassador, Correlimurzon, reasons that the purpose of Downbelow is to isolate the "inferior" lurkers from humanity's genetic line, and says that the Lumati will implement the idea on their own homeworld as soon as possible.
• Evil Laugh: Jha'Dur. When your military rank is War Master and your enemies have nicknamed you "Deathwalker", it's safe to say you didn't earn it through your sweet personality.
• Evolving Credits: Each season has its own, unique opening sequence proportionate to the events that have or will occur. The fifth season's opening compiles the four years (seasons) past, prior to an upbeat and very optimistic tune previewing scenes taking place in that season.
  • Worth noting, the second season has the first season's mysterious-sounding theme song, and gives it a darker, more militaristic tone. The third season mixes two songs associated in earlier seasons with crushing defeats that the heroes suffered, to match the desperate situation the characters are finding themselves in, and the fourth season was the original theme again, now as a victorious reprise.
• Evolutionary Levels: The final level is an amorphous energy form, still physical, but also able to go through walls.
• Exact Words: Marcus pulls this stunt twice in "Exogenesis". When Marcus alerts Garibaldi that his friend is acting strangely, the Security Chief blows him off, telling him to go bother Dr. Franklin instead. At an impasse, Marcus asks, "Can I quote you?" In the next scene, Marcus is down in Medlab, claiming that Garibaldi believes the situation to be very urgent and asked for Franklin's help specifically.
  • Leading to an Oh Crap moment when the pair are captured, with Franklin putting absolute faith in Garibaldi coming to rescue them. --oh, wait. He doesn't even know they're done there, does he?

Marcus: (beat) Not as such, no.

• • Once they arrive at the quarters belonging to Marcus' friend, Franklin declares that his medical oath prevents him from going any further. Marcus, nodding, waltzes through the door.

"You can't go in. I don't have that problem."

• • Sheridan's interrogator pulls this on him a few times. For example, he offers Sheridan a corned beef sandwich. Sheridan starts to eat it, then pauses, suspicious. The interrogator points out that no one's going to try to kill him, since they want a confession out of him. Sheridan eats the sandwich, and they continue their discussion. As the interrogator leaves, he informs Sheridan that the sandwich contained a poison that will make him throw up the entire contents of his stomach. After all, he just said the sandwich wouldn't kill him. He never said it wasn't poisoned.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The character of Warran Keffer existed purely because of this, the studio demanded a hot-shot crack pilot character. Naturally, he got killed off at the earliest possible opportunity. Actually he wasn't that bad a character all told, though some of his dialog was rather cheesy.
  • The reason Season 4 seemed so crowded, and the reason Season 5 seemed to be mostly composed of filler, is because the studio execs planned to cut the show short. That meant that in order to tie the loose ends up quickly, the Earth Civil War arc, originally meant for Season 5 was shoehorned into Season 4 alongside the Shadow War. After the work was done the decision was reversed and they got their 5th season after all — but had no material for it. The neccesary filler episodes made the season rather uneven, ranging from the yawner "A View from the Gallery", to Neil Gaiman's marvelous "Day Of The Dead".
    • Actually, the Earth Civil War arc was meant largely for Season 4. The Shadow War would have ended more or less at the same time, followed by a mini-arc that would've explored the events of "In The Beginning", something that was touched on with the episode "Atonement." The season would've then progressed to the Civil War and ended with Sheridan's capture, so it was really only a difference of four or five episodes.
  • In the Babylon 5 script books, Word of God states that he had Season Five plotted out... and then his only copy of his notes were stolen while at a con. The resulting attempts to recover them led to the self-admitted awkwardness of Season Five... of course, this still wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for the potential canceling of the season. Executive & Obsessed Fan meddling?
• Explosions in Space: Frequent. Lampshaded and justified in the episode "A View from the Gallery," which explains that the explosions are the atmospheres in the destroyed ships briefly igniting before being extinguished by the vacuum. This is also why the explosions are different colors: different races use different atmospheres.
• Explosive Instrumentation
  • The survey ship in "A Voice in the Wilderness".
  • The Cortez in "A Distant Star".
  • In the prequel In the Beginning, an Earth Alliance ship and a Minbari ship both suffer from things exploding and metal beams falling from the ceiling during the botched First Contact space battle.
• Expositron 9000: The station computer.
• Exposition of Immortality: Kosh, Lorien, Morden for the Shadows — all pull very similar "we have been here for longer than you" speeches. Sebastien, the Vorlon interrogator also engages in some reminiscing about his life in Victorian London.
• Extended Disarming: Dureena's arrival in "A Call To Arms"

F

• Face Death with Dignity: Brother Edward in "Passing Through Gethsemane", and the Regent in "The Fall of Centauri Prime":

Milo Virini: "I have been many things in my life, Mollari. I have been silly. I have been quiet when I should have spoken. I have been foolish. And I have wasted far too much time. But I am still Centauri. And I am not afraid."

• Both the Face Heel Turn and the Heel Face Turn, at many points. particularly the Vorlons, who turn out to be Knights Templar, and the main cast, who break away from the Earth Alliance in the third season episode "Severed Dreams".
  • Londo is a striking example of how to do both.
  • Ditto Lennier.
• Faction Calculus: A non-video game example, in which the Vorlons are considered the Powerhouse, the Shadows the Balanced, and the Army of Light as the subversives.
• Fake Kill Scare: One of the psychological tortures used against Sheridan when he was a prisoner of the Clark regime was to stage a mock execution of a fellow prisoner (who was actually working for the interrogators).
  • Sheridan himself was subjected to a fake execution shortly after.
• Fake Memories: With capital punishment reserved for crimes like treason, psychopaths and murderers are instead sentenced to Death of Personality; they have their memories erased and altered by telepaths and their personality restructured to become pacifists and useful members of society ("The Quality of Mercy", "Passing Through Gethsemane").
  • Interestingly, while many characters voice their opinion on Death of Personality, the show itself makes no judgement call on whether it's a humane punishment or not. JMS was of the opinion that the viewers should make their own decisions on such matters.
• Fake Static: Londo's phone call in "The Fall of Night".
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: In "Infection", it's mentioned that Dr Franklin aspires to become one of the great names of medicine, alongside Fleming, Salk, Jenner, and Takahashi.
• Fan of the Past: Garibaldi's hobbies include watching old Warner Brothers cartoons and restoring vintage (manufactured in the distant past year of 1992) motorcycles.
• Fantastic Drug: Dust, which can unlock latent telepathic powers. See also Psycho Serum.
• Fantastic Honorifics: The Minbari use the title "Setai" for the members of the Grey Council.
• Fantastic Racism: There are a lot of tensions between the various races, some of it expressed in the form of xenophobic attacks on one species by another. It wasn't just humans who were guilty of or fell prey to such behaviour either.
  • There's also racism against Human telepaths by nontelepathic Humans. The Psi Corps seems to indicate that telepaths in turn are indoctrinated to see themselves as superior to non-telepaths. A lot of them even refer to nontelepaths as "mundanes".
  • On top of that, there's even discrimation by Earth-born humans against Mars-born humans, with the ongoing resistance movement on Mars being an ongoing background plot point for the first four seasons of the show. The fallout from this continues forth into Crusade.
  • The Centari's Fantastic Racism can seem pretty arbitrary at times. When the Centari met the primitive, backward, simple Humans, they established trade with them and sold them some pretty damn nifty high technology, including jump gates, enabling their meteoric rise as a major galactic power. When they met the primitive, backward, simple Narn... they enslaved them and nearly wiped them out. Yeah. Perhaps the Centari liked Humans more than Narn because Centari look more like Humans than Narn?
    • Or possibly even they were already having problems with the Narn, and could not afford to conquer another race while trying to maintain their dominance over the Narn.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: The jump gates, and (on larger ships) Jump Drives.
  • If you pay attention, you'll notice that every time a ship is shown coming out of hyperspace, the jumpgate looks blue, while every time a ship is shown entering hyperspace, the jumpgate looks yellow. Straczynski said that this was a nod to the Doppler Shift — hyperspace "stuff" coming toward you out of the jump gate is blue-shifted, while material receding away from you into hyperspace is red-shifted.
• The Federation:
  • The Earth Alliance. At first.
  • The Interstellar Alliance
• Fee Fi Faux Pas: Sheridan's dinner with Delenn and Lennier. The poor guy should have just ordered take-out.
• Fictional Currency: Thanks to approved tie-in material, we know the currency for many of the alien nations: Abbai use Gy, Nori and Chuk, Brakiri use Grull or credits, Drazi use Tok, Grome use Vorl, Hurr use Fla, Llort use Yat, Heek and Molat, Markab used Galot and Yolu use Ogo. Hyach and pak'ma'ra use a barter system instead. The Centauri use ducats and the Humans use credits. No word on the Narn or Minbari.
• Fiery Redhead:
  • Lyta.
  • P.F.C. Elizabeth "Dodger" Durman.
• Fighter Launching Sequence
• Fighting For a Homeland: The Drakh, Byron's Telepaths.
• Finders, Rulers:
  • The Centauri Imperial Seal, at least as claimed by Londo.
  • The Drazi factions' leader sashes in "The Geometry of Shadows".
• Find the Cure: Subverted in "Confessions and Lamentations".
• First Contact: Due to a series of cultural misunderstandings, the First Contact between the Earthers and the Minbari lead directly to a full-blown war of genocide that was only barely stopped short of wiping out Earth.
• First Girl After All: We go the entire series believing Lennier came first in the Sheridan-Delenn-Lennier Love Triangle, as Lennier appeared in the first season, while Sheridan was not introduced until season two. The Prequel movie though has a scene where Sheridan and Delenn actually did meet, very briefly and without introduction (or seeing each other, but they did exchange a few lines), during the Earth-Minbari War, ten years before Delenn met Lennier.
• First-Name Basis:
  • He has a last name, but to friend, foe, and stranger alike, it's just Marcus.
  • Awed by Delenn's sacrifice in lending aid to the Drafa Plague victims, Sherdian asks that should they meet again, she call him "John" from then on.
  • Played with in "Objects At Rest", the penultimate episode. As G'Kar and Sheridan are bidding each other a fond farewell, G'Kar calls Sheridan "John". Sheridan starts in surprise, and says that's the first time he's ever called him John.

G'Kar: "No it's not." Sheridan: "Oh, yes it is."

• Fish People: The Abbai.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Hero: Sheridan
  • The Lancer: Ivanova
  • The Big Guy: Garibaldi
  • The Smart Guy: Dr. Franklin
  • The Chick: Delenn
  • Sixth Ranger: Marcus
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: the Vorlon Cruiser and the Narn G'Quan cruisers are equipped with them.
• Flash Forward: "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" consisted almost entirely of four flash-forwards.
  • Babylon Squared and War Without End also. In the former, Sinclair gets a vision of Babylon 5 being boarded by the Shadows. In the latter, Sheridan sees himself on Centauri Prime 17 years in the future.
• Flashback Effects: When the script needs to bring viewers up to speed, clips from earlier episodes are viewed in Deliberately Monochrome.
• Flaunting Your Fleets: Right after Sheridan liberates Earth from the Clarke regime. After Delenn announces the formation of the Interstellar Alliance, the Rangers fly their White Stars in formation over Earth Dome, pounding the point home.
• Fling a Light Into the Future: The past, in this case. Babylon 4 was sent to help in the last Shadow war.
• Flower From the Mountaintop: Ranger instructor Turval uses a hypothetical mission along these lines as an example of the sort of seemingly-trivial mission that might be worth dying to complete, whether you realise it at the time or not.
• Foreign Money Is Proof of Guilt: Garibaldi is framed for a bombing, and as part of this Centauri Ducats are planted in his quarters.
• Forgotten Friend, New Foe: Urza becomes this to Londo, after a resolution is drafted by way of Lord Refa whichs declares Urza and his entire House traitors to the Republic. Urza arrives on Babylon 5 to ask for Londo's help, but when he hears of his connection with Refa, the old friends fall out with a crash.
• Foreshadowing was frequently used--since the series was so intricately plotted in advance, it could be. Similarly prophecies (You Can't Fight Fate), and a particularly well-crafted example of a Stable Time Loop. It was actually built in to such an extent that actors were forbidden from ad-libbing, for fear of it screwing up the foreshadowing.
  • Keffer's last appearance, "The Fall of Night", opens with Starfury pilots goofing off during target practice. Ivannova jibes, "You're dead, Zeta leader!" It's less funny once the episode's over.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Kosh entering the minds of G'Kar and Sheridan, appearing as their respective fathers.
• Fortune Teller: Lady Morella ("Point of No Return").
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The Interrogator from "Intersections in Real Time"
• Frame-Up: Outraged at "Starkiller" Sheridan's promotion to station commander, a pair of Minbari (Lavell and Ashan) arrange for a lurker to steal Sheridan's commlink, knowing he will chase after him. Lavell then attacks Sheridan with Ashan as the only witness, planting a PPG nearby for Sheridan to find. Sheridan reluctantly shoots and kills Lavell while Ashan looks on. Lavell's intention was to sacrifice himself as a "martyr" to ruin Sheridan.
  • G'kar does this to his would-be assassin in "Parliament of Dreams"
  • Garibaldi is framed for the sabotage of one of the station's fighter bays. He finds himself trying to find out who framed him, while avoiding both the Security personnel and the many enemies he has made in the station's criminal underworld.
    • Garibaldi really gets it good with this trope. He's also manipulated by the Psi-Corp into turning against his own friends so they can use him as a tool to overturn a conspiracy against telepaths and as an added bonus get their hands on Sheridan. While it's technically true that he did do the things of which he was accused, it's still a frameup as it was against his will
• Fumbling the Gauntlet: Calling a Minbari a liar usually requires an immediate and fatal response (well, for one episode, anyway, and one JMS didn't write).
• Functional Addict: Doctor Franklin starts using stims in the second season, and becomes addicted to them going into the third season. While he does eventually have a burnout, he goes nearly an entire season with no major problems.
  • In the fourth season, Ivanova appears to have become an alcoholic, doing double-shots of vodka to try and sleep at night, though she doesn't have the same issues with the stuff that Garibaldi has from time to time.
  • Londo Mollari not only loves to drink, but often has much to drink about. Eventually, his alcoholism becomes a tragic Chekhov's Skill, giving him the key to his brief moments of freedom from his Keeper.
• Funny Background Event: In the episode "The Parliament of Dreams", during the Minbari rebirth ceremony, the various characters are handed out ceremonial fruits. When the camera focuses on Delenn again after this is done, G'Kar surreptitiously switches his fruit with Ivanova's. Doubles as a Meaningful Background Event; G'Kar's been targeted by an assassin, and he's on edge because his bodyguard did not show up at the ceremony.
• Fun with Acronyms: SUAEI (Shut Up And Eat It)

G

• Gas Leak Coverup:
  • When the discovery of a 1000-year-old Shadow ship is followed by an immediate quarantine and unmarked shuttles flying in and out of the area, Garibaldi knows something's up.
  • ISN's report that an unremarkable, benign, totally non-suspicious base on Ganymede was destroyed by an "alien ship" (the Whitestar) which the Agamemnon pursued all the way to Jupiter and then destroyed ("Messages From Earth").

Ivanova: (to Sheridan) You look pretty good for a dead man.

• Getting Crap Past the Radar: See the Radar page for a (long) list.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The source of Ironheart's power in "Mind War".
• Genetic Memory: Fear of the Shadows and reverence for the Vorlons are explained as a combination of several species retaining race memories of the last Shadow War and the Vorlons using genetic and mental manipulation on the young species...
  • It should be noted that the fear of the Shadow was purposely put there by the Shadows themselves.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Shadow vessels are commonly referred to as "Battlecrabs." They'll cut through just about any fleet like it was made of soft cheese.
• Give Me a Reason:
  • Ivanova does this often:

Sinclair: Commander, please remove Major Kemmer from C&C. Ivanova: With pleasure. (Beat) You are going to resist, I hope.

• • When the mole who shot Garibaldi in the back is arrested, the arresting officer invites him to "make my solar year".
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Shadows, the monocular "eye" in the Vorlon encounter suits and Lyta gets Black Eyes of Evil when she starts using her enhanced telepathic abilities in her A God Am I stage, and when being possessed by either Vorlons or Shadows during their Final Battle, her eyes are Color Coded for Your Convenience: They glow when possessed by the Vorlons, and turn ink black when possessed by the Shadows.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Franklin tries to help "King Arthur" overcome his denial by confronting him with his real identity (against Marcus' warnings). The resultant trauma is so severe, he falls into a catatonic state. Recalling the deaths of 250,000 soldiers will do that.
  • G'Kar speculates that the reason why every race in existence seems to have one type of food in common (Swedish meatballs, the Narn call their version Breen) is something that will either never be known, or would drive you mad if you did know.
• Goal-Oriented Evolution: Complete with Evolutionary Levels with Energy Beings being the end result.
• A God Am I: Subverted in Jason Ironheart, who while gaining immense godlike powers, was trying to suppress and control them long enough to get away and finish "becoming". Lyta gets like this near the end of the series before she leaves forever with G'Kar. Cartagia is like this, but then he is Ax Crazy.
• God-Emperor: Emperor Cartagia wishes to ascend to God-Emperor status through his dealings with the Shadows.
• God Save Us From the Queen: Delenn is usually even tempered but occasionally has a truely royal rage, which caused an "unfortunate incident" in her Mysterious Past.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: The older races (apart from the Shadows, who are very busy indeed).
• Going Native:
  • Delenn and Sinclair each go native biologically in opposite directions. In a slight subversion Delenn remains culturally Minbari while being biologically human. By contrast Sinclair takes this Up to Eleven, making himself the Minbari equivalent of Moses and Delenn's ancestor to boot, which would also make him a Mighty Whitey.
  • Marcus Cole is a human who lives like Minbari.
• Good Costume Switch: The entire staff gets new uniforms courtesy of Delenn, officially christening them as the Army of Light. Ironically, these uniforms are black. ("Ceremonies of Light and Dark")
• Gold Digger: Daggair and Mariel (Londo's first and third wives, respectively).
  • You do get the impression that most Centari women are like this. Then again, the main source of data we have on Centari women is Londo, who may not exactly be totally reliable.
• Good Guy Bar: Quite a few on the station. Perhaps the most notable ones are the Eclipse Cafe (itself an extension of the Zócalo, easily identified by its blue neon sign), Earhart's (an establishment reserved for EarthForce personnel and their guests), and the high-class restaurant Fresh Air.
• Good Doc Bad Doc: Dr. Stephen Franklin vs. Dr. Vance Hendricks ("Infection").
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: The Centauri Republic is an interesting case. When first introduced, they seem like pretty good sorts (it probably helps that the only Centauri we meet are initially the Plucky Comic Relief and/or the Unwitting Pawn). Then we find out they have an Emperor, and they suddenly drop about 200 points on the Karma Meter.
  • Mind you, the first emperor we meet is a very kind and noble man, seeking to apologize to the Narn for what his people did to them. After his death, however, Emperor Cartagia arrives on the scene to make up for that.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars:
  • Col. Ari Ben-zayn.
  • Boggs, the leader of the Nightwatch in "Ceremomies of Light and Dark", has a rather nasty-looking scar disfiguring one side of his face. Unfortunately for the actor, the scar is real. He got it from diving into a crowd of men carrying knives who were trying to rape a woman. The same actor plays Kaliban in the first season episode TKO; if you look carfully you can see the scar under all his makeup.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck: The comics from DC have this due to censors. "What in the hull" and "We're in deep spit!"
• Gospel Revival Number: I went to the rock to hide my face, and the rock cried out no hidin' place...
• Government Drug Enforcement: Human telepaths who refuse to join the Psi Corps must take powerful medication to suppress their abilities, drugs that eventually drive them to suicide.
• Gray and Gray Morality: The Narn-Centauri War, in a big way. The Shadows and Vorlons, too.
  • The heroes do various morally questionable things as well, throughout the series, but usually with good reason. This ranges from relatively minor things like Loophole Abuse to using outright Mind Rape to find where a murder was about to take place, and of course, the whole launching a rebellion against the government of Earth.
• Groin Attack: Garibaldi uses one in a fight scene in "Survivors".
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Judging by "Soul Hunter", they're still falling for the ol' "sick prisoner" trick in 2258.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: If you value your lives, be somewhere else.
• Gundamjack: Inverted with an abandoned Shadow vessel, which falls into the hands of Earthgov. The Powers That Be aren't planning to use it against the Shadows; Rather, they intend to cannibalize the technology to make us more like them.

H

• Half Truth: Sheridan's Interrogator in Intersections in Real Time lives and breathes this trope. He describes the truth as fluid, as being whatever people agree that it is. He combines this trope with Exact Words to tell outright lies to Sheridan while at the same time claiming that he's being honest.
  • And then, Sheridan acknowledges the man might be right, that truth is fluid. But that means Sheridan's views are just as right as what the man wants him to confess to and Sheridan proves he is right every time he refuses to be broken.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Delenn vs. Neroon vs. Shakiri in the climax of "Moments of Transition."
  • Any scene with Londo and G'Kar in the same room.
• Happily Married: Sheridan and Delenn
• Handy Cuffs: "Quality of Mercy". The crack security staff cuffed the murderer Mueller with his hands in front of him, while escorting him to be executed and he therefore had nothing to lose. He ended up holding an old woman at gunpoint.
• Hangover Sensitivity: In "Born to the Purple", Londo suffers from it. (The knockout drug in his last drink probably had as much to do with it as the alcohol on this occasion.)
• He Knows Too Much / Noble Fugitive:
  • Vice President Clark disembarks from Earthforce One 24 hours before it explodes, claiming to have caught a flu. His personal physician, Dr. Everett Jacobs, is forced to go on the lam after discovering that Clark was in perfect health at the time.
  • Mary Kirkish, Xenoarcheologist and one of the last surviving witnesses of the excavation of a Shadow Vessel on Mars.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: David Sheridan, in the few stories where he could appear, chronologically speaking.
• Head-in-The-Sand Management: EarthGov representative Frederick Lantz, who quotes the famous "peace in our time" line in regard to humanity's pact with the Centauri.
• Hello, Attorney!: Guinevere Corey {"There the Honor Lies").
• Heroic Neutral: When G'kar asks for Minbari aid, Delenn, not unreasonably, points out that the Narn record isn't so good either, they were not totally without responsibility for their fate, and if the Narn won they would treat the Centauri the same way and they would be the ones asking for aid. Not to mention the fact that Minbar had had more then enough of war, thank you very much.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A whole station full of them, in chronological order:
  • Almost all the human ships at the Battle of the Line.
  • Urza Jaddo, deliberately losing a duel with Londo to save his family from disgrace.
  • The Churchill.
  • Kosh arranges for some Vorlon ships to attack the Shadows to help Sheridan build his alliance. He gets torn to shreds for his interference.
  • Sheridan's one-way trip to Z'ha'dum
  • A few Centauri remaining on the island the Shadows were using as a base to keep up appearances!
  • A number of ships take one for the team as part of their collective "screw you" to the Vorlons and Shadows at the final battle.
  • Delenn tries to do this, but Neroon takes her place.
  • Marcus Cole saving Ivanova
• "Hey You!" Haymaker:
  • Garibaldi surprises Matthew Stoner in a corridor with this greeting.
  • During a one-on-one fight between G'Kar and a Narn insurrectionist, another Narn who is overlooking the fight draws his gun, preparing to shoot the ambassador In the Back. N'Toth politely taps him on the shoulder, then wallops him.
• Hidden Purpose Test: The Inquisitor's interrogation of Delenn in Downbelow, which consists of only one, inscrutable question: "Who are you?" When hours of torturous questioning fail to produce results, Sheridan breaks up the test and attempts to release her. Instead, the Inquisitor seizes Sheridan and starts torturing him, having anticipated his meddling and incorporated into the test. Delenn then begs the Inquisitor to turn his attentions back to her; He asks her if she is willing to die for Sheridan, and she replies that "life is her cause" — that one life or a billion is all the same. The Inquisitor is pleased, allowing them both to leave and telling him that they are indeed "the right people."
• Hidden Villain: The Shadows aren't introduced till mid season 1, and it isn't until mid season 2 that we learn anything about them.
• His Name Is--: In "Chrysalis", a severely wounded man manages to spit out "They're going to kill him! They're going to kill --" before dying. During the investigation, Security Chief Michael Garibaldi is severely wounded; he makes a visible point of finishing the sentence before the medical staff cart him away.
• Hobos: Lurkers are a future equivalent of this. Sheridan is quick to point out that transients still exist on Earth, too, but the Ministry of Labor got around this problem by re-categorizing those people as underachievers.
• Hollywood Accounting: This was how JMS got gypped of a large part of his shares of the show's profits.

JMS: The show, all in, cost about $110 million to make. Each year of its original run, we know it showed a profit because they TOLD us so. And in one case, they actually showed us the figures. It's now been on the air worldwide for ten years. There's been merchandise, syndication, cable, books, you name it. The DVDs grossed roughly half a BILLION dollars (and that was just after they put out S5, without all of the S5 sales in). So what does my last profit statement say? We're $80 million in the red. Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits.

• Hollywood Tactics:
  • Seen in the Legend of the Rangers pilot. "We do not retreat, whatever the reason." A rather stupid tactic for a group known as "Rangers", whose job often involves bringing back information on mysterious aliens of terrifying technological superiority. But then, it's Legend of the Rangers: The Search For More Money, you don't expect much from it anyway.
  • Why did the Minbari think that a Satai personally could conduct an undercover operation without being recognized by another Minbari? Or do we now know that Minbari never talk indiscreetly?
    • The identity of the members of the Gray Council is a carefully guarded secret even to the Minbari, themselves.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Ivanova to Sheridan in "Lines of Communication": "What am I, chopped liver flarn?"
• Homage: The series' Myth Arc is one long homage to and a bit of a Deconstruction of a similar Myth Arc in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, with the Vorlons and Shadows standing in for the Arisians and Eddorians respectively.
  • Numerous other sources get nods here and there, some of the more obvious being The Lord of the Rings and Arthurian legends; there is also the aforementioned direct reference to A Canticle for Leibowitz.
• Honorary Uncle:
  • In "Survivors", we hear about a friend Michael Garibaldi used have, whose daughter called him "Uncle Mike".
  • Rabbi Koslov, Ivanova's Uncle Yossel, in "TKO".
  • In Sleeping in Light Garibaldi's daughter calls Dr. Franklin "Uncle Stephen".
• Honor Before Reason/Proud Warrior Race Guy: Deconstructed several times over with the Minbari warrior caste, whose rigid determination to uphold honor and tradition results in a great deal of pain and pointless death.
  • In Gray 17 is missing Delenn is warned that a fellow Minbari might try to assassinate her, and forbids Lennier to ask for Captain Sheridan's help rather then air the Minbari's internal dirty laundry in front of aliens.
  • In Atonement Delenn submits her right to marry Sheridan to her clan elders even though she was the most powerful woman in Minbar and could do whatever the heck she wanted. She obtains her desire not by simply defying convention but by manipulating traditional precedent. This episode shows what a society that really does think in terms of Honor Before Reason is like and is thus while not quite a CMOA, certainly a Crowning Piece Of Good Writing.
• Hopeless War: The Earth-Minbari war.
  • The Narn/Centari war , as the Centari had Shadow backing
• Hot Scoop: Mary Ann Cramer, ISN reporter.
• Hufflepuff House:
  • The Minbari worker caste, who get no lines, no characters important enough to even warrant the title of Red Shirt, and come to power only because a religious caste leader put them there. They're also only seen a few times in the background, and even then you'll only notice them if they're pointed out to you. .
  • Several of the lesser alien races get this treatment too. Several members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds (e.g. Vree, Abbai, Yolu, Grome) are reduced to background characters after the first season. They're mentioned in dialogue every now and then or are seen sitting in council sessions (and in the case of the Vree their ships show up as part of the allied fleet) but other than that they're unimportant. The most extreme example is the Llort, who never get a speaking part or any focus at all.
• Hugo Award (Best Dramatic Presentation) — "The Gathering" nominated 1994; "The Coming of Shadows" won 1996; "Severed Dreams" won 1997; "Sleeping in Light" nominated 1999
• Humans Are Diplomats — as said by Delenn, "Humans Build Communities"
• Humans Are Special: Used rather often, and to occasionally obnoxious effect. Straczynski seems to hold this trope close to his heart. Alien customs are generally portrayed as bizarre and just so gosh darn wacky — see the Centauri contribution to "religion week" in season one, Sheridan's dinner with Delenn and Lennier in season two, the Drazi pilgrims' reaction to an apparent visitation by an angel in season three, et cetera. If an episode features alien customs, expect them to be used as lazy comic relief. Human customs and ceremonies, on the other hand, are treated with the utmost respect — silly or not.
  • This is not always the case. G'Kar's religion is only made fun of once, and that's by Londo, who's just thumbing his nose at G'Kar. Also, the Minbari ritual in the "religion week" episode is presented with respect. Same with the Brakiri "Day of the Dead" in the episode by the same name. On the other hand, one human tradition, the "Hokey Pokey" song, is shown to be so bizarre and wacky that it makes Londo apoplectic.

Londo: "It doesn't mean anything!"

• • • For the matter of that Centauri drinking-party religious rites don't really look all that bizarre even if Sinclair and Delenn disliked it. After all, humans have Mardi Gras.
• Humanity Is Superior: Humans are said to be really good at community building to the point where no one else would have even attempted anything like the Babylon Project, and they have quickly risen to a major power on the galactic scene despite their technology seriously lacking compared to three of the other major powers and a number of League races.
  • A large reason for this was a political move made by the humans before the start of the series. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds was on the losing side of a war with the Dilgar. Humanity decided to sweep in and help the Non-Aligned Worlds win the war while the Big Three; Centauri, Narn, and Minbari, either ignored the war or secretly aided the Dilgar.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: several examples, such as the Centauri, who have two hearts and radically different sex organs: males have six two-meter-long prehensile genitalia located on either side of the back, and which curl up under the arms when not in use, while females have six corresponding orifices.
• Human Popsicle:
  • Second season, we learn that a few human sleeper ships were sent out before the Centauri sold jumpgate technology to Earth. Medlab also has a few units to store and transport patients who need more help than the station can provide. And then there are the Shadow-altered telepaths that turn up later.
  • Marcus Cole, notably because of Straczynski taking his sweet time to decide if he was this or Killed Off for Real after using the alien healing machine to keep Ivanova alive. If the fifth season hadn't been allowed to air, then Straczynski would have said he was dead instead of being this for about 300 years.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: An alternate dimension which allows for speedy travel. The entire dimension appears as a stormy environment with a blood red hue. A set of beacons is placed between jumpgates to prevent ships from getting lost; ships that go off-track are generally lost forever, since a rescue effort becomes near-impossible once the vessel goes adrift. One exception is the EAS Cortez, which is saved by a squad of Zeta Wings acting as a fishing line and using lock-on signals to keep track of each other.
  • It's mentioned several times that there are rumors to the effect that hyperspace contains living things. In Crusade, we found out the rumors were true, and the living things encountered might only have been at the bottom of the hyperspace food chain.
  • Trying to pass through a jumpgate that's under cannon fire isn't such a hot idea, either.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: A common strategy in this setting, with ships in various episodes both being destroyed by enemies coming out of Hyperspace and being ambushed themselves by waiting ships upon exiting themselves. The latter variety usually happening when using a Jumpgate
  • The Minbari are particularly good at this. On one occasion during the Earth-Minbari War, a scout ship lured an EarthForce fleet into a pre-planned position so that a Minbari warcruiser could exit hyperspace in the middle of them. The jump-point, basically being a hole in space itself, took out half the human ships even before the warcruiser existed Hyperspace.
• Hyperspace Lanes: Most ships traveling in Hyperspace make sure to closely follow the navigational beacons transmitted between the Jump Gates. They could go in any direction they want, and try to take shortcuts, but then they run the very real risk of joining the ranks of ships that have gone off the beacon never to be seen or heard from again. Larger ships, which can create their own jump points, have more sophisticated navigational equipment which allow them to travel more freely.
• Hyperspeed Escape: Played straight but only sometimes. Bigger ships can produce jump points to escape, but there is often little preventing their enemies from pursuing them if they want to. Many smaller ships cannot exit to Hyperspace without use of a Jumpgate, and thus end up having to flee for some distance in normal space with their enemy chasing after them. They can piggyback in and out of Hyperspace if a friendly warship is nearby to open a jump point for them, but then they also lack the navigational equipment to safely navigate alone without having a beacon to follow, so this tactic is rarely used unless their escorting warship can follow them. Additionally, forming jump points requires a lot of energy, so if a ship jumps out of hyperspace via jump point, it can't escape to hyperspace until the jump engines have recharged.
  • Subverted in And Now For A Word when a Narn and a Centauri cruiser get into a fight near the station. The Centauri ship is destroyed outright, but when the Narn ship attempts to jump to hyperspace (to avoid detainment by B5 security for violating neutral space), its damaged jump drive malfunctions and explodes.
  • Also in The Coming Of Shadows, when a large fleet of Narn warships are trying to beat a hasty retreat from a Shadow ambush, the Shadow ships fire a weapon that disrupts their Jump Points right as they're passing into them, and all of the Narn ships are disintegrated as a result.

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