History BabylonFive / TropesAToH

** 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."

* AlienArtsAreAppreciated: Human art and cultural artifacts were the only things the humans had to offer the Centauri after first contact. Fortunately the Centauri appreciate fine arts and were more than willing to reciprocate with higher technology. May actually be an example of HumansAreSpecial, since while members of several races are intrigued by human culture, the closest we hear to examples in any other direction are Narn and Centuri complaining about each other's opera.

** 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 [[UniversalTranslator language files]] on Interlac so they can communicate. The aliens respond in ''Minbari'', [[BlatantLies despite claiming that they haven't encountered the Minbari before.]]

** 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). The first generation Starfury design also included panels trailing back from the aft thrusters which were supposed to pivot to redirect their exhaust for thrust-vectoring manurers, but this was never actually done in-show due to the limitations of the CGI technology being used at the time.

* AliensNeverInventedDemocracy: Earth Alliance is the only known democracy in the Galaxy, and even it becames an authoritarian PoliceState for a while. The others are:

** The Centauri Republic: Despite the name, it's a monarchy (and not the constitutional one) with TheEmperor full in power. The Centauruum which is like the Roman Senate and is composed of representatives from the noble houses may control the Emperor's actions but rarely does.
** The Narn Regime: A Military Junta lead by the leaders of LaResistance against the Centauri. Background material goes into more detail and explain that the Narn government's name is the Ka'ri and it is made of several concentric circles of power from nobility and high priests to artisans and peasants. G'Kar is from the third circle of profesionals and intellectuals.
** The Drazi Freehold: Each five years its population takes a scarf of two different colors at random and the two newly born factions fight each other, the winning side takes power then.

* DyingReconcilliation: In "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E03BornToThePurple Born to the Purple]]", Garibaldi discovers that the unauthorized activity on the gold communication channel is Commander Ivanova communicating with her dying father back on Earth. He unintentionally eavesdrops on Andrei Ivanov apologizing to her for an apparent estrangement and failures as a father, shortly before passing on.

* AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker: In "A Tragedy of Telepaths", Londo and G'Kar discover [[spoiler:that G'Kar's former aide Na'Toth had been imprisoned and forgotten for the last two years in a Centauri dungeon, since nobody ever countermanded the late Cartagia's orders putting her there]]. Londo explained that that sort of thing happens with an absolute monarchy, and related a story of a guard detail that was continuously posted at a spot in the Centauri palace gardens, on orders from an emperor 200 years ago to guard a special flower there that had long since perished.

** 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. [[spoiler:Even ''Franklin'' does this to himself, when he finally ''does'' find himself in a NearDeathExperience.]]
* BellyDancer: Shown generously throughout the Dark Star club in "The Quality of Mercy".

* ForWantOfANail: In 'Objects at Rest', Mollari visited Sheridan and Delenn on Minbar. He presented them with an urn, a gift to their son David. Mollari was under the influence of a Keeper (an evil parasite), and as such was destroying his world; the urn contained another Keeper which eventually attached itself to David and controlled him as well. Mollari was quite insistent that he be offered alcohol, as he had not been allowed to bring his own, but alcohol is dangerous to Minbari so there was none available. In fact, Mollari wanted to use alcohol to send his Keeper to sleep for a few minutes, so that he could tell Sheridan and Delenn about the Keepers. If Londo had had just, say, a bottle of whiskey, Sheridan and Delenn could have averted David's fate and saved Centauri Prime.

'''Marcus:''' I'm in awe, Lennier. The way you can take a simple proposition and turn it inside out so that it says what you want it to say rather than what it actually says. Does this come naturally or did you attend some sort of…martial arts class for the philosophically inclined?

** In the B5 movie ''[[Recap/BabylonFiveFilm02Thirdspace Thirdspace]]'', the smaller fighters of the Thirdspace aliens look like {{Living Ship}}s similar to the ones used by the Vorlons, but their larger cruisers, glimpsed just before the interdimensional portal to Thirdspace was closed, were made up of separate parts that floated in what looked like artificial gravity fields around a big glowing ball of light.

* HamToHamCombat: Delenn vs. Neroon vs. Shakiri in the climax of "Moments of Transition."

* HappyHarlequinHat: The jesters of the Centauri court wear hat very similar to ones found on Earth for some reason.

** '''Backstory''': In the Earth-Minbari War, most every battle was a lose for the humans, but they gave themselves willingly to try and stop the advance of the Minbari fleet. Humans would stood up against stronger Minbari forces knowing it was hopeless. In the entire war, there was only one Earth victory, which was when John Sheridan destroyed the Black Star. All other Minbari ships that were destroyed fell because of a Heroic Sacrifice. This was taken further with the Battle of the Line, where almost all the human ships were destroyed this way. The goal of the battle was less to prevent the Minbari from reaching Earth, and more to allow refugees to leave while the Minbari forces were occupied.

** '''3.17 ''The War Without End'' Part 2''': [[spoiler:Sinclair went back in time 1000 years to become Valen,]] abandoning everything and everyone he knew in the present to assume the burden of [[StableTimeLoop living a historically-predetermined life without messing up the timeline]]. He did this in order to make sure the Shadows don't get the upper hand in the present-day Shadow War. Though unstated, it also would have allowed Minbari civilization and Minbari-Human relations to reach what they were meant to be.

** '''4.06 ''Into the Fire''''': The one on Centauri Prime. A few Centauri remained on the island the Shadows were using as a base to keep up appearances when Londo set up his gambit to get rid of Shadow influence before the Vorlons came to destroy them. He wasn't able to convince the Shadows to leave, so instead he put nukes in place without them noticing, and those citizens were killed in the process.
*** Also from ''Into the Fire'': The one by Coriana VI. 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, when they are trying to destroy Sheridan's ship but the others fly in front of the missiles.

*** During the Battle of the Line, Jeffrey Sinclair attempted a kamikaze run on a Minbari ship after his Starfury was damaged. Obviously, it ended differently than he expected it to.

* HiddenPurposeTest: 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 [[BatmanGambit incorporated into the test]]. [[spoiler: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 "[[WhatYouAreInTheDark the right people]]."

** Delenn has to tell minbari under the command of Susan that if they laugh, they deal with her... when Susan cannot speak Minbari properly. "Hatrack Ratcatcher," anyone?