Plot hole: Water pressure seems to be very picky in this film. It crushes Little Geek after passing 17,000 feet but somehow manages to leave Big Geek intact. Also if Big Geek could fall that amount of distance before imploding then why did Flatbed implode after only falling a few feet?
The Abyss (1989)
1 plot hole - chronological order
Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Ed Harris, Michael Biehn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Leo Burmester
Continuity mistake: Early in the film Bud throws his wedding ring down the latrine and then retrieves it with his right hand so it is covered with the blue disinfectant. In a (much) later scene, Bud has a blue right hand, despite not having had one in the intervening period. (01:44:48)
Bud Brigman: The guy is on his own, he's cut off from his chain of command, he's showing signs of pressure-induced psychosis, and he has a nuclear weapon. So as a personal favour to me, could you put your tongue in neutral for a while?!
Trivia: In 1987 Thomas Knoll made a program called "Display", as a side project. He showed it to his brother who worked at Industrial Light & Magic, and they used Display as the basis for their own effects program, which was used to create the alien water tube. The software was refined and named Photoshop, eventually demonstrated to Adobe in 1988, who bought the rights to distribute it.
Question: Bud and Catfish decide to go outside of the rig, swimming out the bottom of one of the hatches. Also, when Bud and Lindsey are in the wrecked submersible they decide Bud will swim with the drowned body of Lindsey back to the rig. How could these three have made it by entering the outside pressure of the Abyss at 1 or 2 miles below sea level without wearing a dry suit like Bud wears while saving Lindsey? They all would have been crushed the instant they left the habitat or submersible.
Answer: At the depth you're asking about, the water pressure is not enough to crush a diver's unprotected body (which is mostly solid/liquid and thus relatively hard to compress). The only thing they have to worry about is their lungs (gases, and therefore things containing gases, are much easier to compress). This worry is addressed by the pressure and composition of the air that they breathe on the rig, in their submersibles, and in their air tanks - this air has different proportions of gases (especially oxygen) compared to surface air, and is also at a significantly higher pressure - high enough to counter the pressure of the water that deep. (Side note: another way you can tell the atmosphere they are breathing in the rig is set at the same pressure as the water at that depth is that there is open water in the moon pool - and it's not rushing in to fill the entire rig, which it would if the air pressure was less than the water pressure).
Aerinah