Apologies in advance: the following is not even remotely on-topic, but that’s what blogs are for, right?

Having just seen the latest installment in the Indiana Jones series I couldn’t help but notice that a certain part of the film felt awfully familiar. In the segment, Indy climbs inside a lead-lined fridge to escape an imminent nuclear explosion. The bomb goes off, throwing the fridge into a dizzying spin. After the dust settles, Jones climbs out of the scorched refrigerator relatively unscathed.

Surely no other action epic has used such an extravagant plot device before? Well, not quite, but almost. You see, the original script draft for the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future called for a time machine built out of — you guessed it — a Philco refrigerator. Operating the time machine required quite a lot of power — 4200 rads to be exact — and the only thing producing that much radiation back in 1949 was a nuclear explosion. To get back to his own time, Marty takes the fridge/time machine to a Nevada nuclear test site and climbs inside. The bomb goes off, throwing the fridge back to the future, and moments later Marty climbs out of the melted Philco with hardly a scratch.

Well, I’m glad that Back to the Future didn’t end up like this. There’s no denying that a Delorean is way cooler than some crummy refrigerator. Still, you have to wonder how a very similar plot sequence ended up in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.