I'm pretty sure there is a connection between his flashes of seeing Charlie dying and this episode but I'm too shell-shocked to think. Did anyone draw a connection?

I think the flashes were Desmond already starting to become "unstuck" in time, but not realizing it, and they weren't as intense - that was triggered by leaving the island. It would make sense (I think)

Thats a good question, they are quite different, the "flashes" come in pieces and they are all jumbled up, where as in FBYE it was a fluid vision of his past, and in last nights epi. it was something else entirely. Future Desmond was pulled back in time, past desmond was pulled forward, and no one was pulled anywhere during the visions.