Nuke the Fridge

I went to Wendy's today and overhead a conversation between two kids that should have been in diapers incoming freshman. And one of them used a term in their conversation that I had never heard before: "Yeah, he so totally nuked the fridge in that one."
The freshmen romped out of the Wendy's shortly thereafter, so I did not get a chance to ask what they meant by that.

That is probably just as well because I would otherwise have sounded like an out-of-touch geezer in a clerical collar. (Granted, I probably am one, but that's beside the point.) I just assumed that I must have misheard him, and went on eating my chocolate Frosty. (We do not speak of those new fangled vanilla Frosties on this blog; hideous creations though they be. )

The longer I thought about it, though, the more I could not figure what he might have said. Nudged the Freak? No, no...can't be that. Puked on the fridge? Possible, but I hoped incoming freshman had not yet sunken to that level of frat boy depravity. Nuked the fridge...I was fairly certain I had heard him right. I might be a premature geezer, but this old boy ain't deef ye know.

As with most puzzles like that, they just sort of stick in your brain. And your brain yells, "I have to figure it out!!"

When I returned to my office (ironically around the corner from the Wendy's, the one fast food place I like), I googled "Nuke the Fridge" out of morbid curiosity. I made sure no one was around in the off chance it was something dirty and I was too naive to know it. (This is a church office after all.)

Turns out it is a reference to a scene for this summer's bomb, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that has gone into the urban vernacular. I never got to see the film (if you can call it that) as I was busy most of the summer. A 65 year old Indiana Jones just sounded silly to me. I mean, what, was he going to be running from a Kingdom of armed AARP members wanting to sign him up for Medicare before they tear out his heart?

Apparently, in a scene early on in the movie, Indiana Geriatric Jones survived a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a refrigerator that is blown into the sky out of which he later walks apparently unscathed.

According to the Urban Dictionary, the term 'nuke the fridge' has become "A colloquialism used to delineate the precise moment at which a cinematic franchise has crossed over from remote plausibility to self parodying absurdity, usually indicating a low point in the series from which it is unlikely to recover."

I'll go along with that. I knew the Indiana Jones series was never going to top Last Crusade, but I never dreamed it would be that corny.

Nuke the Fridge...just an FYI from the Archer.