Nuked the fridge

Nuke the Fridge is a colloquialism used by some film critics and fans and has a meaning similar to jump the shark. It is used to denote the point in a movie or movie series, usually one with a pre-established tone of only semi-seriousness, at which the characters or plot veer into an over-the-top level of the ridiculous or incredible, thus leaving one feeling alienated from the intention of the film. A series that "nukes the fridge" is typically deemed to have passed its peak, changing the tone of the series so far that viewers see it as having fundamentally and permanently strayed from its original premise. After this point in the filmmakers' attempt to keep the story fresh, critical fans often sense a noticeable decline in quality.

Origin

The term is an allusion to a scene in the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull of the Indiana Jones franchise, first released worldwide on May 22, 2008. In this scene the title character is literally hit by the blast of a nuclear weapon while hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator in a desperate attempt at survival. The fridge is hurled a great distance through the sky, while the remaining structures surrounding it are obliterated, and tumbles hard to the ground, whereupon an uninjured Indiana Jones emerges to witness the mushroom cloud miles away. Some disappointed fans of the series found the absurdity of this event reflective of the decreasing quality of the series and adopted the term "nuke the fridge".

The first public use of "nuke the fridge" as a direct metaphor is reported to have been on May 24, 2008 on Internet Movie Database boards. The phrase was adopted by others on the board during that same weekend as a wide number of users began referencing the refrigerator scene in a derogatory way, before eventually emerging elsewhere on the Internet.

Since it's induction, the phrase has caught on as a viral phenomenon, and media notice of the phrase includes articles in Newsweek Magazine and the Toronto Sun, a tongue in cheek reference in Entertainment Weekly, and a discussion on WJXT-TV. The phrase was also Urban Dictionary's "Word of the Day" for June 3, 2008 and MSN's A-List Searches' Hot Topic of the Day on July 6, 2008, and has been used on countless other blogs and websites. On Monday, July 7, 2008, CNBC ran a story entitled "Have Media Stocks Nuked the Fridge." During their news broadcast, they discussed the term's definition, and made reference to the website.

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