Babylon 5/Trivia


 * Did Not Do the Research: When Sheridan talks to as he's seeing him off, he mentions the date of his last known appearance (Nov. 11, 1888) as the day after the end of a series of gruesome murders. You can read his lips as he says "West Side" (even the closed captioning reads it as West Side) but it was over-dubbed as "East Side".
 * Word of God is that he did do the research, and in fact had the relevant information right in front of him as he wrote the scene, and was so angry he could kick himself when he realized the mistake.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Primary and recurring cast members included Bruce Boxleitner, Bill Mumy, Stephen Furst, Jeff Conaway and Walter Koenig, with guest appearances by Bruce McGill, David McCallum, David Warner, Brad Dourif, Jeffrey Combs, Ken Foree, Russ Tamblyn, William Sanderson, Dwight Schultz, Paul Winfield, Richard Moll, Harlan Ellison (as a Psi Cop), and the legendary June Lockhart, among others. And while Londo was his most visible role, Peter Jurasik is a character actor with over thirty years and 70 roles under his belt; for our purposes it's most interesting that he, like Boxleitner and David Warner, was in Tron (as CROM, an accounting program destined for the games grid).
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Numerous examples.
 * Byron the telepath is also the Medic from Team Fortress 2, among many others.
 * When the computer is rebooted after a systems shutdown, it comes back online with an obnoxious, stubborn personality voiced by Harlan Ellison.
 * Ellison also provided the voice for Zooty's talking prop when comedians Rebo and Zooty visited the station.
 * Ardwright Chamberlain -- Nicolai of Shadow Hearts: Covenant -- is Kosh.
 * Mel Winkler, Aku Aku from the Crash Bandicoot series, appears in the episode "And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place".
 * In the 2002 TV movie Legend Of The Rangers, Sarah Cantrell is played by Myriam Sirois -- better known to a generation of North American anime fans as the voice of Akane Tendo from the English dub of Ranma 1/2.
 * Line to God: JMS was a frequent poster on the UseNet group rec.arts.tv.scifi.babylon5.moderated during the show's run.
 * Retroactive Recognition:
 * Mira Furlan (Delenn) went on to play a wild-haired Crazy Survivalist on Lost.
 * Ken Jenkins (Trevor Hall, captain of the Heracles) later played Dr. Kelso on Scrubs.
 * Matthew Stoner only got creepier as he got older. Plus he really hates spiky-haired vampires.
 * David McCallum (who played Dr. Hendricks in Infection) would go on to really rock the bow ties and help fight crime.
 * Shout-Out: The show is known to have a few shout outs to The Lord of the Rings, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Greek Mythology and other works of fiction.
 * In one episode, a plaintiff in a courtroom is suing one of The Greys because his ancestor was abducted by the alien's ancestor, a Shout-Out to the modern day abductee phenomenon.
 * Word of God is that the Canticle reference was not intentional. He had been doing research on monasteries for another project, and so had them in mind when he was writing the episode. It wasn't until later that he realized he'd pretty much done A Canticle for Leibowitz, but he couldn't think of another way to do the scene that worked as well, so he kept it as is.
 * Such as a Martian representative named Amanda Carter in the episode Spider in the Web. With an ancestor named John, in case you didn't get it.
 * And The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester -- which is about a telepathic cop.
 * Not just a Shout-Out-that was the entire inspiration for the Psy Corps and the death of personality.
 * The Psi Corps was a Whole-Plot Reference of sorts; the true Shout-Out was naming the head psicop Alfred Bester.
 * Multiple Shout Outs to George Orwell's 1984: Ministry of Peace, rewriting the dictionaries, etc.
 * The episode Passing Through Gethsemane has a Biblical shout out in its title, and a plot based on H.P. Lovecraft's
 * Much of the philosophy spouted by various races is only slightly re-worded from human thinkers. For instance, much of Minbari philosophy is a reworking of things Carl Sagan said. His "Star Stuff" speech from the Cosmos special is repeated almost verbatim by Delenn in the pilot. Given that modern Minbari philosophy and religion was essentially created en masse by.
 * The greatest Shout-Out in the series finale:
 * In the otherwise forgettable episode Infection, a character trying to get Franklin's attention mentions that there's a Martian death machine parked outside the station, and they'd like to have a word with him about the common cold.
 * JMS was very touchy on the subject of ShoutOuts. He stated that freelance writers got carried away with them in the first season, and he put a halt on them after that. He also claimed that much of what fans called shout outs were either unintentional, non-existent, or a result of both parties having drawn from the same, far older, sources. There was one particular instance in Usenet where he went off on a long rant about this after someone asked if he was referencing Return to Zork in an episode.
 * In his defense, the supposed Shout-Out was quite obscure (a pretty generic piece of dialogue that you could imagine showing up anywhere). When JMS did reference a work or author he was fond of, he usually wouldn't shy away from it. He liked it when fans spot the genuine deals, but when they started grasping for straws he got annoyed.
 * Draal in "The Long, Twilight Struggle" plays up a very Oz-like attitude, right up to proclaiming "great and terrible".
 * The last thing Bester does at the end of his first appearance in "Mind War" is turn to Commander Sinclair, hook his forefinger and thumb into a circle, raise his hand to his forehead in a salute, and say, "Be seeing you."
 * In "The Face of the Enemy", when William Edgars tells Garibaldi that by betraying Sheridan he has brought him closer to the truth. Garibaldi responds by saying "The last guy got thirty pieces of silver for the same job."
 * Vir's conversation with the technomage in "The Geometry of Shadows" includes two: The technomage's name is Elric, and he quotes "an old saying" about not trying the patience of wizards that originates in The Lord of the Rings.
 * Vir's conversation with the technomage in "The Geometry of Shadows" includes two: The technomage's name is Elric, and he quotes "an old saying" about not trying the patience of wizards that originates in The Lord of the Rings.


 * Back when nearly all of the World Wide Web could be linked to on one page, it seemed that most web sites had some sort of sci-fi series tribute somewhere. Star Trek the Next Generation was a particularly popular choice for enshrinement (it was on at the time, see?). B5 has one up on it, though: the NCSA Mosaic browser had a semi-secret page (about:b5) where the developers expressed their love for the series and provided a few links to fan sites in case you wanted to learn more.