FILM · 2020 · USA
Underwater
38 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (38)
- #001
The film is set in 2050, drawing from a newspaper article about the rescue of two survivors.
- #002
In the film, the characters who die do so in the order in which Norah makes contact with them.
- #003
The actors wore airtight suits for the underwater scenes, which made it difficult to hear the director's commands. Each suit weighed about 140 lbs (63 kg).
- #004
When the crew gathers in the central control room for the first time, the opening-sequence sound can be heard, sampled from old hard drives and originally used in Alien (1979).
- #005
Paul's rabbit was real when they first started shooting, but for the increasing number of takes they swapped in a baby for safety reasons. William Eubank never told T. J. Miller that they would not use the live one, so the actor handled the baby with visible respect, believing it was only a replica and that the film would show him holding a real rabbit. They are not sure whether this makes Paul seem more human or more pathological.
- #006
When Norah arrives at Shepard station and checks Captain Lucien's drawer, the original drawing of Cthulhu made by H. P. Lovecraft is revealed. You can briefly see it tied to him with a red string beneath the drilling-site map. The Elder Sign is also directly visible on the map.
- #007
(At about 1:05:50) When Norah opens Lucien's locker, there is a drawing of Cthulhu with a red pin in it, foreshadowing the creature's appearance and also suggesting that Lucien, or others at the Tian company, may have known about it and possibly even deliberately summoned it.
- #008
William Eubank is understandably proud of the shot (at 58:52) of a character somersaulting through the water toward a large platform. "I don't know if people will believe it, but that's a real photograph of people flipping off a real god light hanging from a crane. It's two or three meters off the ground, but still." There is obvious CG in most of the action scenes, but there is also a great deal of physical work from both the actors and the stunt team.
- #009
The release date was pushed back to January 2020 because of The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Filming took place in the spring of 2017. Nearly three years had passed by the time it was released.
- #010
As a bit of advance notice, the parent company of Tian Industries in the film is Pontus, as seen on Norah's jacket. In Roman mythology, Pontus was the primordial sea god who preceded Neptune and the other Olympian gods, and was an ally of the Titans against them.
- #011
The shoulder strap holding Lucien's injured arm bears the logo of the Weyland Corp company. It is the logo from Prometheus (2012).
- #012
The Underwater scenes in which the actors wear diving suits were achieved by shooting in unlit, dark scenes and using volumetric scanning. This involved creating an atmosphere around the actors and letting the flashlights pass through the particles. They were then able to measure the approximate density that the water would need to move around them.
- #013
There is no dialogue in the first few minutes of the opening scene; the camera simply roams the corridors of Kepler Station. This resembles the opening scene of Alien (1979), in which there is no dialogue as the camera moves around the Nostromo. It is the first of many references to Alien (1979) throughout the film.
- #014
The script did not initially open with a descent down a tube to the ocean floor, but "we want to create something where you really feel like you spend some time traveling down, down, down to give an idea of how deep you actually are."
- #015
Paul's stuffed rabbit, "Little Paul," was intended at one point to be a live pet rabbit. The Blu-ray's special features include a montage of clips featuring the scenes with the live rabbit version.
- #016
Following The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of Fox and its assets, and before the name was changed to 20th Century Studios, it was the last 20th Century Fox film released under its original 1935 name.
- #017
The opening title sequence states that Tian Industries was accused of covering up something related to its operations in the Mariana Trench. Over the course of the film, it emerges that they knew about the creatures and either did not care or, judging by Tian Industries' slogan, actively tried to communicate with them.
- #018
They reused the sets for Kepler Station to create Roebuck station by rearranging sections and swapping out parts.
- #019
William Eubank learned SCUBA several years before making the film and recalls telling Jim Pearson (his instructor at the time and the film's water safety consultant) that he was thinking of making an underwater thriller. When the film was greenlit, he called him back for help.
- #020
Contrary to expectations, Smith (John Gallagher Jr.) survives the entire film despite wearing a deep-diving suit bearing the unlucky number 13.
- #021
At 55:11, while Norah searches the area with a flashlight, you can briefly see the light reflecting off the eyes of one of the 'deep ones' following them.
- #022
William Eubank shared that at 1:24:36, when the bulkhead door closes, the rabbit in Liam's lap is a real rabbit.
- #023
The sets were first created in VR, which allowed them to work out details and lighting arrangements before building the physical sets.
- #024
The small creature they capture is called a "clinger."
- #025
Paul's chest tattoo is of the Cheshire Cat, another reference to Alice in Wonderland.
- #026
The "Any road" quote is actually a line from George Harrison's song "Any Road" [written in the 1990s and released in 2003], itself another phrasing of a conversation in the book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
- #027
Captain Lucien is played by Vincent Cassel, who spends his free time riding a motorized skateboard around the set. "He makes us all look very inactive."
- #028
Several scenes from Alien (1979) are recreated in this film. When Paul and Smith leave the elevator to investigate a possible survivor in a collapsed compartment, an unknown organism suddenly leaps from the survivor's corpse toward the audience's point of view as they look closer (Alien - Kane closely observes an alien egg hatching and is face-hugged). Also, when Paul and Liam bring the unknown organism back to the elevator, the crew examines it on a table under light (Alien - Ash, Ripley and Dallas examine the dead facehugger on a lit table and discover it contains acid instead of blood). The creature itself is similar in size and shape to the alien that bursts from Kane's chest in Alien.
- #029
At the end of the opening title sequence, just before the director's name check, rapidly advancing images form an alien resembling a Cthulhu mask.
- #030
The title sequence includes two newspaper articles written by Henrik Swinehart and Seth Kleinberg. Alphonse Swinehart was responsible for the main title design, while Seth Kleinberg is a visual effects artist uncredited in the titles who worked on this film.
- #031
At 4:30, a playing card called the Queen of Cups is visible, the film's first nod to Alice in Wonderland.
- #032
There is no scene in the entire film that takes place on land, or even on the ocean surface.
- #033
Kristen Stewart shaved her head for this role.
- #034
At 3:30, these are people on the pipe's arm extension, but they are so small and move so fast that no one notices.
- #035
The small ones (twice human size and smaller) actually resemble H. P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones, the followers of Dagon and, of course, Cthulhu, on which the giant creature is based. Shoggoths are giant amoeba-like (blob-like amoeba) creatures covered in hundreds of eyes.
- #036
T. J. Miller appeared in Cloverfield (2008), while John Gallagher Jr. appeared in 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016).
- #037
They recorded the commentary on 23 December 2019, about two weeks before the film's release on 10 January 2020.
- #038
Jessica Henwick and T. J. Miller both appeared in projects based on Marvel Comics. Henwick appeared in Iron Fist (2017), while Miller appeared in Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018).
Continue through the archive
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work