History Fridge / IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull

** Poster artist Drew Struzan said George Lucas wanted the teaser poster for KOTCS to be the shot of Indy's silhouette looking at a mushroom cloud because he loved that image. Paramount Studios wouldn't go for it but Lucas asked Struzan to make a [[http://www.imagebam.com/image/df677a267065962 painting]] for him so he could keep it. Ultimately it wasn't the idea of Indy surviving an atomic blast hiding in a refrigerator that Lucas liked, it was seeing a hero of the early half of the 20th century witnessing and juxtaposed against the nuclear nightmare of the latter half.

*** I didn't know what to think of the fridge scene until I remembered in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', [[WhatCouldHaveBeen the time machine was going to be a fridge, and to get back to 1985, Doc and Marty went to a 50s nuclear testing site]]. They made the time machine a car because they didn't want little kids climbing into fridges and getting stuck, and it would've been extremely expensive to shoot the proposed climax. This was a ShoutOut to the original script of BTTF, which Spielberg produced!

* To many, Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast is a Wall Banger already being known as "Nuking the Fridge". To me, if he had merely gotten in and survived, I would have thought the same. The fact that the fridge was flung through the air, while everything else was disintegrated, and that he came out with barely even a bruise, just tells me that this is RefugeInAudacity. -- @/LordTNK

*** Actually, every Indiana Jones movie has started that way, with the Paramount logo turning into something else. -- GeneralNerd
*** But using a mole hill for the match cut must have been some sort of a reference to that saying. Almost like Lucas and Spielberg were egging on the haters. -- [[{{Tropers.Premonition45}} Premonition_45]]

** The opening of KOTCS opens with a MatchCut as the Paramount logo transitions to a mole hill. This is a reference to the saying "Make a mountain out of a mole hill", which means making a huge issue over a minor point". And that's ''just'' what happened! [[FanDumb Fans got worked up over this tiny detail]], in a manner not unlike the scorn the StarWars prequels have had.

* In [[Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade the previous film]], we saw that [[BerserkButton Indy really doesn't like when people call him "Henry"]]. But now, Indy has gotten used to being called Henry by his friends and peers, even upon learning Mutt's actual name is Henry Jones III, he says "Good name, Henry.", because of how he reconciled with his father in the last film.
** Hmm, he actually didn't mind being called Henry. It's his real name, after all. What he didn't like was being called "Junior". Only his father did that, and it has the UnfortunateImplications of Henry Sr. seeing his son as nothing but an appendage of himself and a disappointment as a result, because Indy didn't pursue the same career in life Dad did.

*** He's probably still trading stories at the retirement home with Paul Edgecomb from TheGreenMile to this day, though.

* Marion's son goes by the nickname "Mutt"...which seems like a generally scruffy RebelWithoutACause name until you think about who his father turns out to be. Henry Jones Jr. named himself Indiana after ''the family dog.''

** It also shows a clear contrast with the villains in the previous films - the Nazis collected religious artefacts because they believed God was among their side. The Soviets were, in theory, an atheist society. They'd be less inclined towards religious artefacts and more on scientific and psychic phenomenon.

** The Ark only goes after those (good or bad) that look into it. Since no one had the time to it as they were so busy chasing the new MacGuffin, the worse that could happen would be the warehouse burning down in Holy Fire.

* The fact is, after 50+ years of having adventures around the world searching for relics of different cultures, getting involved in espionage in two world wars and witnessing first-hand the power of three major religions, the only thing that could possibly surprise Indiana Jones by this point in his life would '''have''' to be aliens(and having a son he never knew about).

** The Ark only goes after those that look into it. Since no one had the time to it as they were so busy chasing the new MacGuffin, the worse that could happen would be the warehouse burning down in Holy Fire.

** Heh, those guys didn't understand being over-the-top was one of the series' major selling points. -- @/{{Medinoc}}.
*** It's not even that over the top. The movie took place in the 1950s, the "nukes" back then weren't nukes -- thermonuclear weapons wouldn't be developed for somewhere around another decade. At the time, the "nuclear" weapons (the term at the time was atomic) were fission bombs, with a yield measured in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT). Modern nuclear weapons are fusion bombs, and measured in megatons (millions of tons of TNT) -- literally ONE THOUSAND TIMES stronger than the primitive atomic weapons of the 1950s. This is borne out by the real life fact that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities bombed with atomic devices at the close of WWII, had significant numbers of survivors even without the benefits of lead-lined refrigerators to hide in --the weapons of the day simply weren't strong enough for the kind of total unsurvivable devastation we think of from nuclear weapons today. In fact, some of the modern fuel-air devices in use by the modern US military in the middle east (such as the MOAB) rival 1950s-era fission weapons in explosive yield. -- Kitty_TC
**** Would just like to add dates here. The first thermonuclear device was Ivy Mike, tested at Eniwtok Atoll on Halloween 1952. It clocked in at 10.4 megatons, but it was too big to be weaponized; in 54 Castle Bravo was tested at 15, and that one, a dry bomb without horrendously large cooling systems to keep the unbonded hydrogen isotopes liquid, was a deliverable device, so thermonuclear weapons were available at the time. That said, the majority of megaton-range weapons were tested out at sea, since nobody wants to use a bomb that big on dry land, so the device seen in this movie is probably in a similar range to the Hiroshima weapon, and geared more towards a miniaturization of existing technologies instead of making the biggest hole possible (which, as they eventually learnt, was most easily accomplished with more smaller bombs anyways). That said, I doubt Lucas and Spielberg think about the technical accuracy of their movies that much. -- Morganbored
*** No they don't. The MOAB has a yield of 11, that is ''eleven'', tons. The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of ''13,000'' tons, greater by three orders of magnitude. What the MOAB is comparable to is weapons based on the W54 warhead, such as the M-388 Davy Crockett. But that thing was specifically designed to be as small as possible and the blast itself wasn't even the point of it, the radiation was. So the biggest conventional bomb designed to be as powerful as possible is about equal the nuclear bomb designed to be as small as possible. -- Sordid
*** The MOAB is not a Fuel-Air bomb, its a conventional explosive bomb. Fuel air bombs (like the Russian Father of all bombs which weighs half as much as the MOAB but is 4 times stronger) can rival the blast effect of a low setting dial-a-yield nuclear weapon, but despite of what people believe the blast is not created by explosives, but by igniting a cloud of vaporized fuel released in the air. This consumes the oxygen in the area and produces a very rapid variation in the local air pressure that creates a blast effect. Thus Fuel-Air Bombs have effects order of magnitude higher then their weight might indicate. However to obtain something that would rival a 5 kiloton nuclear weapon the damn thing would have to weigh around a 100 tons. Good luck dropping that, the only aircraft able to carry the load would be AN-225, and even then I don't think it would be droppable.
*** Most of the bombs tested were around 30 kilotons (such as [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_t8jKU1d5E Operation Cue]]), roughly twice the yield of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The explosion shown is significantly larger and more destructive than a 30 kt bomb, so it would have to be ''really'' big, probably 100 kt or larger, to do the kind of damage we see.
*** Keep in mind that Indiana Jones movies are based not on today's facts, but the logic of the time. The character himself is based on the idea that in the 30's, serialized shorts made archeology out to be guns-a-blazing treasure hunts. By the logic of 50's Cold War "duck and cover" safety shorts, Indy's escape makes absolute ''perfect'' sense. It's supposed to be a mock of that logic.
*** No matter what logic you use or how powerful the bomb is or how Indy survives a drop; one fact remains: that no one ever made a lead lined fridge (or a fridge that looks like the one in the film) There's no reason to make one - lead is poor insulator and heavy as well. Although, on a side note, the fridge looks mostly like a Crosley shelvator, but reads something like "Radiation King" above the handle.
**** Radiation King, you say? You mean the same one as in VideoGame/{{Fallout}}? That would actually explain a whole lot.
**** This idea is referenced in a recent [[http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=709 comic]] from ''Webcomic/SequentialArt''.
** I thought ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' was just as good as any of the other three, with all these complaints about it being anything other than a highly entertaining adventure romp having become a pet peeve of mine. The worst of it is that most of the ignoramuses whining about the fridge-nuking scene fail to realize that the fridge is ''lead-lined''; what do you think was the purpose of that totally gratuitous shot? In TheFifties, people thought that you could survive a nuclear blast if you surrounded yourself with lead (and that you could also avoid it by hiding under a table). Since in IJ AllMythsAreTrue, it makes (ahem) perfect sense for Indy to have gotten away with it the way he did. -- @/PlanetCool
*** Actually, it wasn't the whole "surviving the heat and radiation of the blast" that bothered me about that scene. As you say, they did make a point of showing the fridge to be lead-lined. No, what killed me was the fact that he survived the ''impact'' of being dropped from hundreds of feet in the air. Maybe if there were airbags as well as lead in that fridge...
**** Lead isn't a magical metal. It won't allow an appliance to withstand the blast of a nuclear bomb.
**** The "lead lined refirgerator" makes even ''less'' sense for me. There is '''''literally''''' no purpose to line a fridge with lead. It's a horrible insulator, and even if the entire walls were filled with lead, it still wouldn't protect it from the blast. And, there is no commerical purpose (if the entire house and everything inside is destroyed, how is the fridge surviving going to help?), it has no military application (and the manufacturer's tag means it isn't military).
***** What's to say military engineers didn't install a lead casing on a commercial fridge after-market? Maybe they did it purposely, say, to experiment with how well lead can protect a fridge's contents from becoming irradiated. This experiment would have had practical applications. If successful, US military bases' and bunkers' food storage areas could be lead-lined to prevent food from being affected during an atomic attack. Far fetched? Yes, but so is hitching a ride on a Nazi submarine, racing a minecart through a lava-filled cavern, and catching a branch as your tank falls over a cliff, as occurred in the first, second, and third films.
*** After watching the last crusade for the first time, I immediately noticed that Indy drank from the holy grail, an act that can heal fatal wounds as shown with his father. Even if such an act does not grant immortality to Indy once he left the temple/cavern/thing, I would have been disapointed if Indy did not have an upgrade, and KOTCS actually shows us an Indy over 50 years old who is not only still in good shape, but can also shrug wounds, even if said wounds are radiations: it is not an AssPull, it is a ChekhovsSkill from the previous episode. -- Nixou
**** Thank you. I came to this page to add exactly that.

** The problem with this is that 1930's adventure serials are parts of American pop culture antiquated enough to now be viewed with some measure of reverence, or at least not held to be inherently silly, while the vast majority of 50's sci-fi flicks are now seen as the type of B-movie schlock that got skewered on ''MST3K''. Not to say George Lucas & pals missed the target, only that they weren't aiming for a bullseye to start with.

** The problem with this is that 1930's adventure serials are parts of American pop culture antiquated enough to now be viewed with some measure of reverence, while the vast majority of 50's sci-fi flicks are now seen as the type of B-movie schlock that got skewered on ''MST3K''. Not to say George Lucas & pals missed the target, only that they weren't aiming for a bullseye to start with.

* During the skirmish at the Area 51 warehouse, several of the storage crates are damaged, including the one that holds the Lost Ark. Keeping the events of the first film in mind, what if the Ark's lid came off?

* During the skirmish at the Area 51 warehouse, several of the storage crates are damages, including the one that holds the Lost Ark. Keeping the events of the first film in mind, what if the Ark's lid came off?

* The fact is, after 50+ years of having adventures around the world searching for relics of different cultures, getting involved in espionage in two world wars and witnessing first-hand the power of three major religions, the only thing that could possibly surprise Indiana Jones by this point in his life would '''have''' to be aliens(and having a son he never knew about).

*** GeorgeLucas[='=] real name is George Lucas Jr., his father being the first George Lucas. However he never went by the junior in his professional career.

* The fact is, after 50+ years of having adventures around the world searching for relics of different cultures, getting involved in espionage in two world wars and witnessing first-hand the power of three major religions, the only thing that could possibly surprise Indiana Jones by this point in his life would '''have''' to be aliens(and having a son).