by "not rendering in cms" you mean you can edit the image, but it's not visible to visitors, images are gone, visitors can see, but editors can't? or none of above?

neither editors nor visitors can see the image.  none of the above.

so, meta data is present in database (you can see image enlisted in media asset) but it gives 404 for editor and visitor?

Correct.  I see the image list with the name but no image is rendered.

what was the jump from version perspective? from 8.0 to 8.5 directly? what if you take the same blob storage, previous db and 8.0 - and images are back? not aware that there are some blob migration stuff going on in 8.5..

I found out that the blog data was deleted on the initial deployment after the upgrade.  I have gone back and  readded my images and cleaned up the pages.  I have since redeployed with no issues.

thanks