The Poseidon Adventure

Factual error: Throughout the end there is fire everywhere. All of that fire would consume any oxygen that was in the rooms and fill the rooms with heavy black smoke. They are walking and climbing everywhere without the effects that the smoke and lack of oxygen would have caused.

Factual error: In the scene where the ship encounters the tidal wave, the ship is located in the Mediterranean Sea and is struck by a tsunami generated by a sub-sea earthquake 130 miles off the coast of Crete. The Mediterranean is a relatively calm body of water compared to the Atlantic. Beyond that, a tsunami wave from even a major earthquake will pass almost unnoticed to ships at sea; tsunamis only rise up and become dangerous in shallow water on coastlines.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Throughout the movie, the characters talk of "the" engine room. The Queen Mary (aka Poseidon) has four engine rooms: forward port, forward starboard, aft port, and aft starboard. There are also four shaft alleys (one for each propeller shaft), along with two generator rooms and five boiler rooms.

mdwalker

Factual error: When they first encounter the sliding red fire door it is supposedly hot to the touch, when the fire door is slid open it leads to the kitchens, the "fires" are the gas burners from the stoves. First of all, the ovens and stove tops on ships are run on electricity, not natural gas. These burners would not produce sufficient heat to make the room extremely hot, not even with hot steam from burst pipes.

Visible crew/equipment: When Rev. Scott swims up the first stairwell, after pushing aside the dead crew member, as his head comes up the shaft, you can see, very quickly, the flippers of a crewmember swimming out of the shot behind him. (01:22:55)

More mistakes in The Poseidon Adventure

Mrs. Belle Rosen: You see, Mr. Scott? In the water I'm a very skinny lady.

More quotes from The Poseidon Adventure

Trivia: The scene where Belle (Shelly Winters) dives into the water was actually rehearsed by having her jump into the water. She decided to dive in while filming the scene and that take was used.

More trivia for The Poseidon Adventure

Question: How is it that when Ackers falls in the large body of water (assumingly boiling) in the funnel, he dies - yet Mr. Rogo jumping in to try to help is submerged for many seconds underwater and then climbs out alive and overall, not burned?

Answer: Because he doesn't boil, there's no suggestion that the water is that hot. After Ackers falls in, and while Rogo tries to save him, there are two large explosions in the shaft; we can presume that, while Rogo was able to escape, Ackers was injured/trapped/otherwise incapacitated below the surface, and drowned.

More questions & answers from The Poseidon Adventure

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.