When Bud and Lyndsey are in the sub deciding how to escape, a cloth moves over the camera lens to wipe water off it. [I reviewed that scene four times carefully and there is no cloth.]
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When the crew are running around the passages, a guy with a beard yells something at Bud, and then uses a fire hydrant to put out a small fire. Funny, it doesn't make a noise. See more...
Trivia
Ed Harris had such a miserable time making the film that after it's release, he disowned the picture and refuses to talk about it. See more...
The Abyss (1989) - 12 corrections
Directed by James Cameron, starring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn (add more)
Genres: Action, Adventure, Sci-fi, Thriller, Drama
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
When Bud and Lyndsey are in the sub deciding how to escape, a cloth moves over the camera lens to wipe water off it. [I reviewed that scene four times carefully and there is no cloth.]
When Lindsey and the Seals first descend to the rig, the Seals get off of the top of the submersible and walk across the sea floor to the rig. There is sediment on the surface they're walking on (as evidenced by the marks the nuke sub left) yet none of it is stirred up. Deep sea sediment is very very fine (small clay particles) and walking across it would create large clouds of sediment. [This is akin to those postings about not getting the gravity of the moon or Mars right. Yes, there should have been big clouds of sediment. If James Cameron was making a documentary, there would have been. However, filming though a cloud of swirling mud would have been impossible. This is a concession to film making procedure, not a mistake.]
Just before Bud descends to disarm the warhead Lindsey asks him why it's he who has to go. His response is, "if not me, then who?" The answer's obvious: the Navy SEAL right next to him who's been thoroughly trained in deep-sea diving with the special breathing liquid and who would certainly know more about disarming nuclear warheads than a commercial diver. [As Bud says later - he 'always knew it was a one way trip'. It's a suicide mission and the Navy Seal, trained in the use of the liquid breathing gear, knows that too. So when Bud says 'If not me, then who?' he is asking who is willing to die in his place (though he doesn't want Lindsey to know that) and nobody is.]
When they are filling Bud's suit with the pink liquid and he panics, one of the seals says "we all breathed liquid for 9 months, his body will remember" or something like that. But this is incorrect. In the womb our lungs may well be filled with amniotic fluid but we don't use them to breathe at all, all the oxygen comes from the mothers bloodstream via the umbilical cord. [He's trying to reassure Bud that it's going to be alright - if he has to stretch the truth to do that, that's what has to be done. Bud would hardly appreciate it if Monk got technical at this point.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
During the flooding of the drill rig, Bud's wedding ring saves the day by preventing the barrier door from closing. Though in reality the ring's soft metal could never actually stop a moving hydraulic barrier. [Flawed assumption - the rings are not made of soft metal. According to the book, which was written in conjunction with James Cameron both before and during the making of the film, Bud and Lindsey had their wedding rings made of titanium.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
Several times in the film it is mentioned that the rig is on the ocean floor some seventeen hundred feet below the surface. Yet Lindsy swims without any protection from the wrecked submersible to the rig, and Bud and others swim from one module to another. The absolute maximum depth the unprotected human body can stand is less than six hundred feet, and that is in the case of superfit divers who spend years training for their record dives (and some die trying). At seventeen hundred feet the water pressure would crush an unprotected human being like a schnitzel. [As a deep sea SAT diver I have worked on many rigs as in the film. The air pressure in the rig is the same as the water pressure. That's why the sea doesnt pour in through the moon pool. You can swim from the rig without a problem, I have done it many times with just a wet suit to stop the cold killing me. You cant swim to or from the surface though as you would change pressure to fast and your lungs would pop.]
When Coffey steals the sub to take the nuclear warhead down the trench the big bearded worker fires the Seal's submachine gun at the sub. When he does he holds the gun by the extended barrel that Coffey screwed onto it earlier. This extension a suppressor and has holes drilled all along the length of it. The holes allow gas to escape the barrel. That gas is extremely hot and would have burned the worker, but he doesn't even flinch. [The barrel extension is simply that - an extended barrel with a ventilated shield to allow the firer to use a two-handed grip on the weapon as an automatic weapon that small has vicious recoil, the first one or two rounds would be on target but all the others would decorate the ceiling. It is true that a suppressed weapon has holes drilled into the barrel but they are very small and are used to allow the combustion gases to expand into a CLOSED cylinder thus reducing the noise of the shot.]
When disarming the nuke Bud is trying to figure out which one of the two wires to cut. With two wires only cutting either of them will break the circuit. [The detonation circuitry of a nuclear bomb is not going to be a simple loop circuit.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
After the nuke is disarmed, Lindsey pleads with Virgil to drop his weights and ascend back to the rig. Not possible - at extreme depths the pressure is so intense that even oxygen bubbles will not rise to the surface, being compacted to a density as great or greater than the surrounding water (water cannot be comressed to a higher density, no matter how much pressure is exerted upon it). Dropping his weights would have no effect. [Lindsey is in hysterics, and is trying to think of ways that she can save Virgil, even though she knows they won't work. Love can often cloud your judgement.]
When Bud gives Lindsay CPR, every time he gives her a breath, her cheeks puff out. When administering CPR, this is not supposed to happen. The air is supposed to go into the lungs, and the chest will rise and fall. This is how the rescuer knows that he or she is giving breaths correctly. If air is going only into the cheeks, the rescuer must reposition the victim's head and try again. [This isn't really a factual error so much as just a special effects thing. Doing correct CPR on a breathing person could seriously injure them. Its just like any time in a movie someone gives chest compressions and barely moves the patients chest. Real CPR is brutal.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
When Ed Harris has finished getting used to the underwater breathing fluid. He gives a thumbs up to indicate he's OK. As a diver this sign always means "surface". OK is a circle of the thumb and index finger. [Since he isn't submerged this is not an issue, he is giving the thumbs up knowing no-one would misunderstand his gesture as wanting to go to the surface].
When Ed Harris and Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio (MEM) are in the wrecked utility sub deciding who will drown and who will use the dive gear to swim back, they decide it will be MEM. Why do they then sit in the sub and wait for her to drown? Why not have her hold her breath and swim until she drowns and then she won't be dead as long and would not be as hard to revive her? [If they should swim out together, she or he would drown 'en route' therefore there would be a great deal of struggling, which would waste valuable swimming time, at least she had the chance to hyperventilate from panic, supercharging her system with oxygen. At the depth they are already at, the extremely low temperature inside her lungs would help to slow down to almost hybernation state her blood decomposition, conserving the exsisting oxygen in her heart and brain, (drowning does not mean immediate brain death) therefore the technique they have decided is quite probably the most economical (in theory) in view of the circumstances. However, without doubt, she would certainly suffer from a big dose of hypothermia and be out of action for the rest of the movie, ignoring the probability of brain damage or consequential 'cold-shock' death.]
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