Goofs

Linda Rogo had to change into her husband's shirt because she didn't wear a bra and couldn't climb in her gown. However, when she is in the smokestack about to climb the ladder, a bra strap is visible. In the DVD commentary, Stella Stevens acknowledged that she saw this error in the rushes and pleaded to have it removed, but to no avail.

When Susan jumps from a table attached to the ceiling, she isn't wearing shoes. When she lands in the table cloth, she's clearly wearing shoes.

When Belle tries to talk Reverend Scott out of swimming, you can see her medal is above her waist, but in close-ups the chain is shorter and above her chest.

As the survivors, led by Gene Hackman, make their way toward the engine room, they get dirtier and dirtier, except for the exposed legs of Stella Stevens and Pamela Sue Martin, which remain dirt-free.

When scenes of the bridge listing to starboard are shown, the scenes from other areas of the ship are shown as being "level."

In the last scenes, as they are exiting the ship and getting on the helicopter, they walk over a clean hull. After being in service, the keel would not be as clean as shown and easy to walk on.

When Acres fell, there was an explosion underneath him that killed him. What he fell into was the ship's open-air ventilation shaft. There is nothing on the top of the shaft that could have blown up.

The roaring fires inside the capsized ship would have used up all the oxygen and the escapees would have suffocated before rescue.

The pressure inside the ship would have been much greater than the outside pressure. With all the doors open inside the ship, when the torch first cuts through the hull the air would have rushed out and the ship would begin sinking faster.

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.

Just after the capsizing scene in the dining room, many passengers are seen clinging to the dining tables, which were bolted to the floor (now overhead). Many chairs had fallen, but several are still attached to the floor by ropes which were used to hold the chairs in place during rough weather.

A normal tidal wave (or tsunami) is no threat to ships at sea, especially those which are miles from shore and in relatively deep water. This is because it requires shallow waters and certain geographic sea floor features to generate the massive waves attributed to them. However, as was clearly depicted in the film, this tsunami was caused by an undersea earthquake.

As the wave approaches the captain asks "are we all battened down?" The response from his officer is "tight as a button, sir." As the wave hits the ship the captain orders the crew to close all watertight doors. If they were all battened down as earlier described, all watertight doors would have been closed previously.

"Batten down" refers to all external doors and openings. Inside the ship there are also watertight doors which seal off sections off the ship, preventing the whole ship flooding and sinking. As passengers and crew still needed to move around the ship the captain only ordered these doors closed at the last minute.

Reverend Scott makes no effort to resuscitate Belle after she dies from her heart attack. While it's possible she was beyond saving, the fact remains that Scott never tried CPR or anything else that may have saved her. (NOTE: As CPR training of the general public had just started on any large scale during the same year as this film was released, it is probable that the character of Reverend Scott would not have had even a rudimentary understanding of the process of CPR, particularly because the world's first mass citizen training in CPR took place in Seattle, Washington in 1972, and the setting for this movie was in the North Atlantic as the ship was traveling from New York to Athens, Greece, so most of the characters would most likely not have come from the Seattle area in the first place.)

In the opening storm sequence, the point of view forward over the bow from the bridge shows the horizon canting off-level as the ship rolls, which would not have happened in reality. The horizon would remain level. The error occurred during filming with the miniature ship, when the camera was canted left and right above the model to accentuate the rolls of the ship in the storm, when it should have been attached to the model itself. This would have shown the correct perspective of the ship rolling in the storm, with no movement of the horizon ahead. The film's director acknowledged the goof in a chapter about the film in his autobiography.

The rope that is used to swim underwater to the engine room is clearly secured, via hooks, in several places.

As the ship is tipping over, a man in the dining room falls onto the Christmas tree and grabs onto it. Although the floor had become one of the walls, gravity is visibly still pulling him towards it. This is because, although the dining room set could tilt on hydraulics for more serious angles, the camera was simply tilted.

When Gene Hackman (as Rev. Scott) and Arthur O'Connell (as the Chaplain) are having their theological conversation while walking on deck and the camera pans right, you can briefly see the buildings of Long Beach in the distance, even though they are supposedly out to sea. These shots were filmed on the Queen Mary, which is currently permanently moored in Long Beach.

Many chairs in the dining room were still bolted to the floor which now became the ceiling. There were no ropes visible. Had there been ropes, the chairs would still have been able to move about as ropes are flexible. These chairs were bolted most likely to protect actors, actresses, and extras from injury.

Mrs. Rogo's screams during the first explosion do not match her lip movements.

A singer sings "Morning After", a slow song, whilst dancers are dancing quickly.

When Reverend Scott is swimming to the engine room before he gets trapped, he swims up to the next deck, you can see the legs and fins of a crew member visible on that deck.

When the man falls into the light fixture towards the end of the capsizing scene, the airbag can be seen rippling from the impact as he hits it.

A problem inherent to the original novel and all the movie adaptations is that, simply put, a single wave on its own would not be able to overturn a cruise ship 180 degrees. At most, a wave would knock the ship on its side 90 degrees. When the RMS Queen Mary, which inspired the original book, was nearly capsized by a wave it tilted about 50 degrees. Even if additional waves hit the ship overturning it 180 degrees it wouldn't stay that way. Large vessels like cruise ships and battleships are designed so they won't stay upside down even if they got to that point, naturally returning to 90 degrees. The USS Oklahoma only stayed upside down after getting the mast stuck in Pearl Harbor's mud, while the SS Andrea Doria settled at 90 degrees until it sank.

How the Doctor & the passengers are going to escape by the Bow is never explained.

When the Captain sees the wave, he immediately tells the engine crew to turn hard "left". No Captain would say left, he would've said hard port.

Gene Hackmans minister seems to know the Poseidon very well He knows his way around the engine room very fast.