Due to, among other things, its notoriously grim cast mortality rate, Babylon 5 is a show that is well-known for how much sadder or more uncomfortable many scenes seem when watching them barely a generation after the show concluded.
- Sinclair/O'Hare's exit from the show. There was a hole in his mind.
- "And the Sky Full of Stars" features Sinclair being drugged and suffering from delusions. It was revealed after Michael O'Hare's death that he suffered from schizophrenia, which was the real reason he left the show after the first season.
- There's also his angrily telling Bester "Get out of my head!"
- And saying "Enough people have messed with my brain this year" in "Eyes." Even worse, that was the last episode to be filmed in the season, so when he said it he was actually very close to starting intensive therapy to manage his condition.
- Crossing into real life, Jerry Doyle wasn't aware of O'Hare's condition and did a few interviews where he derisively called O'Hare "crazy."
- One of Zathras's most memorable lines is "[Zathras] probably have very sad death." The actor playing him, Tim Choate, died in a motorcycle accident.
- Franklin's musing on the briefness of human life in his debut episode. His actor Richard Biggs only lived half of one, dying at age 44 from a heart condition.
- Also, in "The Very Long Night Of Londo Mollari," Londo has a sudden heart attack with no warning. Biggs was unsure that this would be realistic, that Franklin would have no idea of any warning signs that Londo's heart was failing.
- The scene after Londo gets G'Kar removed from the council, where Sheridan tells him that he'll miss him and how the council just won't be the same without him. The actor playing G'Kar, Andreas Katsulas, died from lung cancer in 2006, and was mourned by all the rest of the crew.
- A more in-universe example: At the beginning of Walking Through Gethsemane, Ivanova asks Brother Edward if he wants to place a wager on a chess match. Brother Edward replies that gambling is a lesser sin, and he always felt that if you're gonna sin, go for one of the really big ones. This joke takes on a new light when it turns out that before he had his memory wiped, he was a Serial Killer.
- A semi-fictional list of unexpected power grabs includes "Russia in 1917 and 2013." Cue Russia's invasion of Ukrainenote at that time.
- Another more in-universe one. Londo at one point jokingly wonders to Morden why he and his associates don't just wipe out the Narn homeworld. Near the end of the season, when his own people really do bombard it with asteroids, Londo is silent and horrified.
- Doubles as Foreshadowing, since Morden's only reply is a patient "One thing at a time, Ambassador."
- In "Day of the Dead", we learn that Lochley's childhood friend Zoe dying by overdose at a fairly young age, ending what was clearly a rough life, is what inspired her to get her life back on track and enroll in Earthforce. While the choice of name was most likely just a coincidence on scriptwriter Neil Gaiman's part, cult actress and writer Zoë Lund would die in this exact manner the following year at the relatively young age of 37 after having lived a thoroughly miserable life. Adding to the eerie coincidence, Lund had previously made a brief appearance alongside the episode's main guest star Penn Jillette in the Miami Vice episode "The Prodigal Son".
- In the series finale, Zack Allen walks with a limp 20 years later due to a prosthetic leg. Jeff Conaway would wind up in a wheelchair due to his painkiller addiction, and didn't make it 20 years past the end of the show.
- There's a scene involving Zack, Garibaldi, and Lochley in "The River of Souls" where they discuss the afterlife. As of 2017, two of the actors have found out about it personally.
- In "Walkabout," Franklin wakes up after a one-night stand to find the woman unconscious, much like the circumstances of Richard Biggs' wife finding him dead.
- Part of season 5 was devoted to Garibaldi's lapse into alcoholism. Alcoholism was a contributing factor in Jerry Doyle's death in 2017.
- In the series finale, just before the station's destruction, Ivanova, Delenn, Vir, Franklin, Zack, and Garibaldi all take a last look around. Less than 25 years later, five of the six actors in that scene had passed away.
- Sheridan and Delenn spend years knowing he's going to die in his 60s. In fact, it was Mira Furlan who died at 65 after years of failing health.
- When Sheridan reveals to Delenn that he's doomed to die in twenty years, he tells her, "I'll be in my early sixties by then. That's a good run." Although Bruce Boxleitner is still alive and in his seventies, five other main cast members ultimately died between the ages of 60 and 65.
- The sheer amount of untimely deaths suffered by the cast and crew, which even more than Poltergeist or Bewitched can make you wonder if there's a curse on them:
- Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin), congenital heart defect in 2004 at age 44.
- Tim Choate (Zathras), motorcycle accident in 2004 at age 49.
- Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar), lung cancer in 2006 at age 59.
- Jeff Conaway (Zack Allan), pneumonia as a complication of opiate addiction in 2011 at age 60.
- Michael O'Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair), heart attack after years of schizophrenia in 2012 at age 60.
- Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi), heart attack as a complication from years of alcoholism in 2016 at age 60.
- Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto), complications from diabetes in 2017 at age 63.
- Mira Furlan (Delenn), complications from West Nile virus in 2021 at age 65.JMS: It is another loss in a string of losses that I cannot understand. Of the main cast, we have lost Richard Biggs, Michael O'Hare, Andreas Katsulas, Jeff Conaway, and now Jerry Doyle, and I'm goddamned tired of it. So dear sweet universe, if you are paying attention in the vastness of interstellar space, take a moment from plotting the trajectory of comets and designing new DNA in farflung cosmos, and spare a thought for those who you have plucked so untimely from our ranks... and knock it off for a while. Because this isn't fair.
- In "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", an antagonist makes holographic duplicates of the heroes of Babylon 5 to show them acting completely against their real inclinations for a Propaganda Piece. By the 2020s, AI advances are making the idea of a computer-generated image posing as a real person in a video a lot less unbelievable.
- The episode "Confessions and Lamentations" focuses on the difficulty of dealing with a deadly pandemic. Problems include delays in acknowledging the pandemic, refusal to take actions to properly address it, and fearmongering aimed at the early victims of it. All things that would contribute to the COVID-19 Pandemic years later.
- Further, the plot of the episode includes Delenn's famous farewell to Sheridan in case she does survive after deciding to provide comfort and ministry to the sick Markab. Mira Furlan would later die of complications from West Nile Virus in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
- One of the show's major story arcs is Earth's descent from a democracy to a fascist dictatorship, and another story arc involves a eugenics campaign (by the Psi-Corps, in hopes of breeding stronger telepaths) and an attempted genocide of a minority blamed for secretly controlling the government (aimed at the telepath population). JMS would later reveal in his autobiography that his father's family were Nazis during World War II.
