History Film / TheAbyss

* PowerIncontinence: The aliens' presence within a certain proximity causes electrical systems to go haywire or stop working entirely. At no point in the film do they do anything to mitigate this effect or even indicate that they are aware of it. This phenomenon is what triggers the plot due to it being directly responsible for the ''USS Montana's'' collision with a cliff wall via loss of propulsion control at a critical moment, leading to the escalation surrounding US Navy efforts to recover the submarine while in close proximity to a major Soviet ally. [[spoiler:The only exception to this is when Bud is able to re-establish communication with the survivors on Deep Core after being rescued by the aliens and take to their city at the bottom of the trench.]]

* PowerIncontinence: The aliens' presence within a certain proximity causes electrical systems to go haywire or stop working entirely. At no point in the film do they do anything to mitigate this effect or even indicate that they are aware of it. This phenomenon is what triggers the plot due to it being directly responsible for the ''USS Montana's'' collision with a cliff wall via loss of propulsion control at a critical moment, leading to the escalation surrounding US Navy efforts to recover the submarine while in close proximity to a major Soviet ally.

* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler:After Bud defuses the nuke, he only has 5 minutes of oxygen left (when just getting down there took 30 minutes). He types out his last messages to Lindsey, telling her that he knew the trip would be one-way only, asking her not to cry, and telling her he loves her. Then he calmly waits on the ledge for his air to run out.]] [[spoiler:Fortunately, the aliens come to his rescue.]]

* LampshadeHanging: Lindsey hangs a lampshade on [[spoiler: the entire crew getting to the surface without decompressing, presumably to let the audience guess the aliens did it]].

* OneWayTrip: Bud's decision to go disarm the nuke. [[spoiler: [[YouHadUsWorriedThere Subverted]] in that the aliens let him live.]]

* MonumentalDamage: Subverted. In the special edition we see giant tidal waves about to wipe out the Golden Gate Bridge, Lady Liberty and a few others but then it stops.

** The pet rat, who people will definitely worry about (including the British Board Of Film Classification - the shots of the rat in the breathing fluid were cut from the UK release). The American cut reveals that the actual rat was unharmed.

* WireDilemma: Bud is told to cut the blue wire with the white stripe, and not to touch the black wire with the yellow stripe. This piece of information turns out unhelpful due to the yellow chemical light making both look identical, so he just has to guess.

--> '''Hippie:''' [[BringMyBrownPants Oh, man. I give this a Sphincter Rating of about 9.5!]]

--> '''Lindsey''': It's not easy being a cast-iron bitch. It takes discipline, and years of training... A lot of people don't appreciate that.

--> '''Lindsey:''' Hi, Brigman.
--> '''Bud:''' Hi, Mrs. Brigman.

-->[[spoiler: '''Bud:''' ''(typed)'']] KNEW THIS WAS ONE WAY TICKET / BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO COME.

-->'''One Night:''' "Keep talking, Lindsey, let him hear your voice."
-->'''Lindsey:''' "Okay, Bud, your depth is 8900 feet, you're doing fine--"
-->'''One Night:''' "No, Lindsey. ''Talk'' to him."

-->'''Bud''': No! No, she has a strong heart! She wants to LIVE! C'mon, Linds! C'mon baby! Zap her again! Do it!... Do it!... Come on baby, come on baby!... Come on, breathe baby. Goddamn it, BREATHE! ''Goddamn it, you bitch, you never backed away from a thing in your life! Now fight! FIGHT! FFFFIIIIIIIGHT!!

--> "Hippy, do me a favor? Stay off my side."

* BigNo: Bud, after Lindsey drowns. [[spoiler:She gets better]].

* NippleAndDimed: The film is rated PG-13 even though Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's breasts are visible during the CPR scene. Possibly because the context of the scene is not at all sexual or erotic.

This might forever hold the record for most technically complex movie ever made. Cameron, crewmembers and major cast members had to become dive-certified, since some of the filming took place in a set built inside (and under the surface of) a flooded, partially-built nuclear reactor containment vessel. (Cameron spent so much time underwater that he regularly had to spend time in decompression chambers, viewing dailies while hanging upside down in the pressure tank.) Many of the FX shots were done with precisely constructed models and green screens. The "water tentacle" was a wildly expensive, difficult and groundbreaking piece of CGI effects.[[note]]It was considered so difficult that the script was written in such a way that, if the shots couldn't be pulled off, the entire sequence could be dropped without significant changes to the rest of the film.[[/note]] With today's tech-infrastructure the movie could be made at a fraction of the cost with full CGI, but in 1989 the shots were often live footage combined with green screen models, matte photography, animatronics ''and'' CGI elements.

* WeddingRingRemoval: Bud throws his titanium wedding ring down a toilet in a fit of pique when he learns his estranged wife is visiting the underwater station he is running. Thankfully he has second thoughts and fishes it out. It eventually saves his finger (and life) when a bulkhead closes on it later.

** They aliens themselves have a name: They refer to themselves as the ''Builders of Memory''. Information gathering, archiving and peaceful colonization of habitable oceans are their primary goals - but ''do not'' [[BewareTheNiceOnes make them angry.]]

* BaitAndSwitch: Coffey pins Lindsey up against a wall, and says "I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw you." Then we hear two ripping noises … and he produces a piece of tape, which he sticks over her mouth. (The trivia subtitle track on the DVD release pops up with "What did you think was going to happen in a PG-13 movie?" just after this happens.)

* BaitAndSwitch: Coffey pins Lindsey up against a wall, and says "I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw you." Then we hear two ripping noises … and he produces a piece of tape, which he sticks over her mouth.

* RealityIsUnrealistic: The scene where the rat is immersed in a breathable liquid isn't a special effect - the rat really is breathing liquid fluorocarbon emulsion. (Not in the UK release, however). The same technology is used in modern medicine, to treat extremely premature babies whose lungs aren't developed enough to handle breathing air.

* IdiotBall: Let the mining team disconnect the cable connecting them to the surface so it neither yanks them off the cliff edge or snaps loose to fall on them? Nah! Take the Idiot Ball and head to the submarine to retrieve a nuclear weapon because evidently, [[DeusExNukina decommissioning a nuclear submarine is much more important]] [[TooDumbToLive than being alive to do it]]!

* HumanityOnTrial: The aliens consider washing humanity away for all its warmongering and cruelty. They even raise huge tsunami waves all around the globe and held them erect for a while just to make their point perfectly clear, but changed their minds when Bud willingly sacrificed himself on a OneWayTrip to the depths in order to save the aliens from a nuclear warhead sent down by an Ax-Crazy U.S. Navy SEAL. (It's debatable whether the nuke would have hurt them, but still...) They even saved Bud's life as a "thank you.

* HarmlessFreezing: A realistic application of this trope.

* NotSoDifferent: Bizarrely, this is half the moral of the book, and it's the moral the ''aliens'' learn from it all. They realize that they're actually just as bad as the humans, and need to grow up just as much as the humans do.

* BitchAlert: Lindsey, coming complete with a character introducing her as "the Bitch Queen of the Universe" and another character making a gagging gesture when Lindsey's put on the phone. Of course this merely sets her up as a DefrostingIceQueen who's shown in a more complicated light and ultimately proves the introduction wrong.

** As Bud reaches near the bottom of the trench, he types there's light everywhere. One Night comments that he must be having serious hallucinations due to the depth. Nope. Just an ''alien city''.

This might forever hold the record for most technically complex movie ever made. Cameron, crewmembers and major cast members had to become dive-certified, since some of the filming took place in a set built inside (and under the surface of) a flooded, partially-built nuclear reactor containment vessel. (Cameron spent so much time underwater that he regularly had to spend time in decompression chambers, viewing dailies while hanging upside down in the pressure tank.) Many of the FX shots were done with precisely constructed models and green screens. The "water tentacle" was a wildly expensive, difficult and groundbreaking piece of CGI effects[[note]] It was considered so difficult that the script was written in such a way that, if the shots couldn't be pulled off, the entire sequence could be dropped without significant changes to the rest of the film.[[/note]]. With today's tech-infrastructure the movie could be made at a fraction of the cost with full CGI, but in 1989 the shots were often live footage combined with greenscreen models, matte photography, animatronics ''and'' CGI elements.