Characters / The Abyss

The Deep Core crew

Virgil "Bud" Brigman

Played by: Ed Harris

• A Father to His Men: Is protective of his crew.
• Embarrassing First Name: His real first name is Virgil.
  Hippy: Virgil?

Lindsey Brigman

Played by: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

• Defrosting Ice Queen: Quite literally, as the poor lady winds up with a near-fatal case of self-induced hypothermia.
• Feet-First Introduction: The audience's first glimpse of her is her high-heeled shoes stepping out of the helicopter.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She doesn't relate to people terribly well (this is pointed out more clearly in the novel, which shows how her brilliance derives from a better ability to relate to machines and engineering projects). Yet she's the one who's the most optimistic about the aliens' intentions and the most open to communicating with them.
• Ms. Exposition: Spends most of the early descent explaining the perils of prolonged deep water diving to Navy SEALs who already know all about it (and are able to finish her sentences on the topic); though her explanation is used both for the audience's sake and to demonstrate that Coffey knows exactly what is happening to him and chooses to ignore it (in his defense, if things had gone according to plan they would have been on the sub back to the surface before his condition deteriorated badly).
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: They might be divorced, but trying to kill Bud is a good way to have Lindsey end you. Literally.
• Wrench Wench: She designed the Deep Core rig and pitches in to help maintain it when things start breaking.

Lisa 'One Night' Standing

Played by: Kimberly Scott

• Black Dude Dies First: Averted. She is ultimately one of the survivors.
• Sassy Black Woman:
• Twofer Token Minority: The only African-American (and one of only two women) in the cast.
• Wrench Wench: Is seen working with a wrench.

Alan 'Hippy' Carnes

Played by: Todd Graff

• Conspiracy Theorist: He believes that the NTIs have been covered up by the CIA.
• Parrot Pet Position: His pet lab rat travels with him on his shoulder.
• Properly Paranoid: He trusts the Navy SEALs about as far as he can throw them and he turns out to be right when they sneak a warhead from the sunken sub onto the rig. Also, along with Bud, he's the first to spot that Coffey has the shakes.

Catfish De Vries

Played by: Leo Burmester

• Old Soldier: More middle-aged than old, but he is an ex-Marine who's frustrated at not being in his prime anymore, but as Coffey found out the hard way, he still packs a punch.
• Stout Strength: While he might have gained a bit of extra upholstery around the middle, you do not want to get on the wrong side of "The Hammer"

Dwight Perry

Played by: Dick Warlock

• Character Death: One of the many casualties of the flooding of Deep Core.
• The Generic Guy: He doesn’t have as much of a developed personality as the rest of the crew.
• Mauve Shirt: Gets a little characterization, but he’s one of the many crew members to drown when Deep Core floods.

Jammer Willis

Played by: John Bedford Lloyd

• The Big Guy: Along with Lew, he's one of the strongest members of the crew and does a lot of heavy lifting.
• Nice Guy: One of the friendlier members of the crew.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After being in a coma for most of the movie, he awakens just in time to knock out and disarm the SEALS keeping the crew locked up.

Lew Finler

Played by: Kidd Brewer Jr.

• The Big Guy: Along with Jammer, he's one of the strongest of the crew and does a lot of heavy lifting.
• Character Death: He drowns during the flooding of Deep Core when he is sealed in the rapidly flooding living quarters.
• Deadpan Snarker: "Bud, did you know your hand is blue?"
• Nice Guy: One of the more lighthearted crew members.
• Sacrificial Lion: He's one of the most well-developed crew members, and he drowns during the flooding of Deep Core to establish how dangerous the situation has become.

The SEALs

Lt. Coffey

Played by: Michael Biehn

• Anti-Villain: He's not only cut off from his chain-of-command, but he also succumbs to High Pressure Nervous Syndrome, making him go "buggo". (Fortunately, his teammates are more clearheaded.)
• Ax-Crazy: Is suffering from dementia and paranoia from High Pressure Nervous Syndrome by about halfway through the movie.
• Self-Harm: Late in the movie, he demonstrates how far off the rails he's gone by cutting rank chevrons into his arm.
• Sociopathic Soldier: At first, he shows genuine remorse when he realizes his shortsightedness has killed four members of Bud's crew, not to mention one of his team. However, the worsening effects of High Pressure Nervous Syndrome turn him into an example of the trope, to the point where he's cutting rank chevrons on his arm with a K-Bar.
• Tragic Villain: It's easy to hate him for what he's doing...until you remember that the man is under the influence of pressure-induced psychosis, meaning that even Coffey is barely aware of what he's doing.
  • Made more tragic by the moments when you see him seemingly starting to come out of the psychosis, such as when he's alone in the pod bay and right before the pod he's in implodes from the pressure.

Ensign Monk

Played by: Adam Nelson

• The Medic: For the SEALs. He also helps to patch up a member of the Deep Core crew who gets injured while searching the Navy submarine and even apologises to Bud for not being able to do more for the man. All of which helps to establish that he's nicer than his fellow SEALs.
• Token Good Teammate: He is the only one of the SEALs who recognizes that Coffey has lost his mind, being The Medic, but on account of him crippled and the only other SEALs being dead or desperate to follow his superior's orders, the only thing he could do is remove the ammunition from Coffey's weapon and help with the liquid oxygen suit that he brought onboard. Foreshadowed when he grins when the water tentacle stares at him for a moment.

Schoenick

Played by: Christopher Murphy

• Badasses Wear Bandanas: Wears a black one after the SEALs take over the rig.

Wilhite

Played by: George Robert Klek

• Character Death: He is sealed off in the flooding living quarters and drowns.
• Red Shirt: He gets no characterization and drowns during the flooding of Deep Core.

Other

The Aliens

• Aliens Steal Cable: This was how they gathered so much information on human activity. It took them awhile to decipher our language as they don't communicate vocally. They didn't however, need an interpreter to understand the horrific war imagery they were seeing on TV, and for a time believed all humans were insane evil monsters.
• All There in the Manual: The NTIs (Non-Terrestrial Intelligence) call themselves the "Builders of Memory".
• Angelic Aliens: The aliens inhabiting the eponymous abyss◊ are an aquatic version of this. They are able to manipulate water and are, for the most part, benign and pacifistic, protecting the lives of humans on multiple occasions. However, they show themselves as a species not to be messed with when they threaten to annihilate human civilization with massive tidal waves if they don't cease their warlike ways.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: Information gathering, archiving and the peaceful colonization of habitable oceans are their primary goals on Earth, as it is across the galaxy. They will not tolerate humans warring on each other.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: The aliens world is built on this trope.
• Combat Tentacles: They have an intuitive control over water, to the point where they use a fifty-foot tentacle of it as a remote probe. It even mimics people's faces.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: In the director's cut, they threatened to annihilate humanity with mile-high mega-tsunamis rearing up on every coast in response to a nuke. Instead, it turns into a demonstration of the aliens' power - if that nuke went off, they in turn, would've wiped out all terrestrial life on the planet as retaliation.
• Elemental Powers: They manipulate water instead of solid materials.
• Ethereal Choir: The leitmotif of the underwater aliens.
• Humanity on Trial: Horrified by the news and documentaries they gathered from TV of man's countless atrocities, the Builders decided to observe humans to see if there was anything redeemable about us. Fortunately for mankind, when they learn of Bud and Lindsey Brigman's love for each other, they implement a Benevolent Alien Invasion and abort a Final Solution plan.
• Organic Technology: Subverted; the aliens seem to have based all their technology around water, and water is technically inorganic. But the aliens' aesthetic sense certainly went for this.
• Space Elves: The alien beings are Type III.
• Starfish Aliens: The "non-terrestrial intelligence" creatures look like glowing, vaguely humanoid jellyfish.
• Weather Manipulation: One of their many abilities is controlling the weather on Earth. Within seconds they were able to make Hurricane Fredrick disappear, and they're also the ones who controlled, and created it. This was all done so the ships and escort would leave Deepcore alone, so the NTIs could make first contact.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: They're actually trying to do good. They intend to teach Bud about how they don't like mankind warring among themselves, but they're not hesitant about using massive tidal waves to wipe out all humans if they continue. They even do exactly that before stopping just in time to get their message across.

Bendix

Played by: Chris Elliott

DeMarco

Played by: J. Kenneth Campbell