X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Mistakes

When Bud and Lindsay are in the sub after the big chase, water leaks in and Bud searches for something to fix it. He delivers some dialogue while opening (I believe) a first aid kit. The camera angle switches to Lindsay as she says something, and Bud can be seen in the background opening the kit once again. See more...

Trivia

In some scenes, the occupants of the submersibles look like projections on a screen, because they were. Scenes filmed with miniature submersibles had images of the actors projected inside, to give the illusion that they were occupied. See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

The Abyss (1989) - 24 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. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
Pictures
Easter Eggs
Corrections
Questions
Submit
In the final scene how does the rig end up on top of the alien craft when it was on the ledge to its side? [It was dislodged from the ledge while the craft was surfacing.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
The shoot was notoriously rigorous and hard on actors and crew members. Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio stormed off the set after the camera ran out of film, and Ed Harris pulled over and broke down while driving home from the shoot. [An actress "storming off the set" is hardly trivia worthy, and unless you have a source for "pulling over and breaking down" none of this really qualifies as trivia.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
During the scene after the water tentacle is discovered, the whole crew has a meeting. At this time, Coffee is cutting his right arm under the table. In the following scenes, his arm shows no signs of any cuts. [The part where they are all together, it's shown that he's cutting his LEFT forearm. These cuts can be seen clearly later on, for example, in the scene where he says "It went straight for the warhead, and they think it's cute," and during the fight at the pool with Bud.]
Edit
When the alien city (ARK) is rising to the surface, the deep core ship is right next to it, but when the city is above the water the oil rig (deep core ship) is on top of it near the center which is impossible. (Special Edition Version.) [The aliens can manipulate the movement of water and everything in it. You see the alien city rising next to the ridge, then off-camera they move the oil rig on top.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie Time
The whole scene with the rat and the breathing fluid could never have happened because rats can't vomit, so the poor thing would have died. [Vomiting is the forceful ejection of stomach contents. It has nothing to do with ejecting substances from the lungs. That would be coughing, which rats *can* do.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
The outdoor set of the Deepcore rig was never dismantled and can still be seen in a huge water tank which was part of a decommissioned nuclear power station in North Carolina. Simply input "The Abyss, United States" into Google Earth, and it's right there. [When The Abyss, United States is put in Google Earth, it asks you if you mean The Abyss, Coconino and takes you to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.]
Edit
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. [Nonsense. He's done publicity for the film, including being interviewed for the DVD documentary. He has publicly stated there are things that happened during filming that many of the crew didn't want to talk about, but he's never "disowned" the film.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
There are no fish in the entire movie except the scene in the sub with the crabs on the dead guy. You'd think there would be fish in the ocean at least every now and then. [Why? They're in a noisy, huge, lit up oil rig. That would drive most, if not all fish away from the immediate area.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
Near the beginning there is a scene were they are launching a submersible with Lindsey and the seal team in it. Lindsey waits until the sub is dangling over the water then pulls a lever and the sub drops about 10 feet into the water with a big splash. Several problems: 1) Those subs are hugely expensive. They put them in the water very gently. 2) Those subs are so expensive that they don't risk having a release mechanism as depicted. They use a standard screw shackle to ring and would have to have a swimmer let them go. 3) Due to the buoyancy of the sub, falling that far to the water would give all passengers back injuries due to the sudden deceleration when the sub hits the water. [They're on an emergency rescue mission and don't have time to be delicate with the equipment. Also, everyone in the sub is shown being thrown around when the sub hits the water. Hence the angry looks toward Lindsey.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
Early in the movie, when they're going to search the sub, Jammer asks how big the drop-off is and Catfish replies by saying it's "2.5 miles [13,200 ft] straight down". When Bud went over the drop-off to disarm the bomb, he went well past 13,200 ft. [2.5 miles must be as far as anyone's measured reliably. We saw the pressure destroy Little Geek when Bud is descending showing that a submersible can only go so far. Catfish is just giving him the best answer they currently have.]
Edit Corrected by Grumpy Scot
During the scene where Bud is falling into the abyss to disarm the warhead, Hippy states that he's 12,000 ft below. Just a few seconds later, Catfish says he's now at 17,000 ft. There is no time in between the 12,000 and 17000 ft that makes you think it's been more than a few seconds of him falling. It's not possible for him to fall 5,000 ft in just a few seconds. If it were, then it would have taken Bud less than a minute to get to the warhead. Later, Hippy says that it took Bud 30 minutes to get down there. So it doesn't add up. [The sequence is obviously not in real time. Just because the film doesn't make it obvious where the breaks are, it doesn't mean that they aren't there. It's sloppy editing, sure, but that doesn't make it a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
In the scene where Bud is about to sneak up on Coffey, it cuts to a part where one of the Seals is unloading a magazine that was in the assault rifle. Later, when Coffey jumps into Flatbed, Hippy tries to fire at Coffey with the assault rifle, but the safety is on. Then Catfish takes the gun and shoots bullets at Coffey. Didn't they unload the bullets from the magazine? [The magazine the Seal emptied was from Coffey's pistol, which is why when he tried to shoot Bud nothing happened. The Seal was simply showing them he'd disarmed Coffey.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit 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.]
Edit 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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker

1 2 • Next page • Show all