Word.ws English Dictionary

nuke the fridge

nuke the fridge verb: to suddenly include a strange or illogical event, often leading to radical and often disappointing changes to the narrative of the film.

Verb

nuke the fridge (third-person singular simple present nukes the fridge, present participle nuking the fridge, simple past and past participle nuked the fridge)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To suddenly include a strange or illogical event, often leading to radical and often disappointing changes to the narrative of the film.

Forms of nuke the fridge

third-person singular presentnukes the fridge
present participlenuking the fridge
past participlenuked the fridge
pastnuked the fridge

Origin of nuke the fridge

From a scene in the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), where the main character survives a nuclear detonation by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator.

Questions about nuke the fridge

What does nuke the fridge mean?
Nuke the fridge means to suddenly include a strange or illogical event, often leading to radical and often disappointing changes to the narrative of the film.
What part of speech is nuke the fridge?
Nuke the fridge is a verb.
What is the past tense of nuke the fridge?
The past tense of nuke the fridge is nuked the fridge.

Words near nuke the fridge in the dictionary

  1. nuke family
  2. nuke it from orbit
  3. nuke it out
  4. nuke plant
  5. nuke plants
  6. nuke the fridge
  7. nukeable
  8. nuked
  9. nuked and paved
  10. nuked it from orbit
  11. nuked it out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nuke the fridge (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nuke the fridge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nuke_the_fridge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.