Plot hole: Hiding in a fridge (or anything else) in order to be conveniently blown out of the way by an exploding nuclear device is absurd beyond belief. The fridge is just so much extra reaction mass and would be vaporised by the expanding nuclear explosion - it wouldn't be daintily picked up and thrown a few kilometers to safety. If it was, why doesn't it land in a shower of similar artifacts which have also been dislodged and thrown around? Incidentally, even if it was thrown out of the way as shown, anyone inside it would be turned into a smear of strawberry jam by the acceleration required to beat the shock and heat wave of a nuclear blast, and then liquefied by the deceleration involved in hitting the ground at that speed.
Factual error: In the warehouse scene, the lights and other metal objects are affected by the box's magnetic field. Yet the soldiers easily lift the box into a metal truck to load it and slide it forward. If the box's magnetic field was as strong as suggested, it would have dragged the soldiers forward as it was magnetically attracted to the truck, and it would have taken much more effort for them to slide it onto the truck bed once it was stuck there.
Indiana Jones: Put your hands down, will ya? You're embarrassing us.
Trivia: In the Mayan temple, Indy comments "I have a bad feeling about this." This line was a running gag in George Lucas' Star Wars saga, and was used by Harrison Ford at least once. (01:46:10)
Question: Why did the nuke fridge scene cause so much controversy?
Answer: Another problem is that people couldn't articulate what they didn't like about the film, and point to the "Nuke the Fridge" scene as a quick example of what they think is bad about it. In the realm of Indy, it's really no more outlandish than jumping out of a plane in an inflatable raft like in Temple of Doom.
It's considerably more outlandish. The raft scene was recreated/reviewed by Mythbusters, and they found that the raft floated down at a mere 22 mph. It would be hard/impossible in real life to stay on the raft, sure, but if you buy that bit of movie cheekiness, it would definitely slow their descent enough to survive, especially since they land a) on a slope and b) on soft snow. The fridge scene, however, has no such saving grace... it's completely ridiculous and unrealistic in every detail.
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Answer: People felt it was ridiculous and cartoonish, even by Indiana Jones standards. Even if it was possible to survive a nuclear blast via the lead lining of a fridge (it's not), or that the fridge would simply be thrown away rather than be melted/torn apart like everything else in the vicinity (it wouldn't), the impact of being flung what appears to be a mile or so through the air, then violently crashing into and rolling over the ground, would certainly kill anything inside. The controversy arose because usually, in "classic" Indy films, the fantastical elements were exactly that: fantastic, magical, and/or supernatural. This was presented as taking place in our reality, with no "power of God" or magic spells, and for many, that was just too much disbelief to suspend.