Wiring a house to prevent light flickers and overloaded breakers
The problem is that when the fridge turns on and draws a lot of power, causing the voltage on that circuit to dip. Anything else on the same circuit (lights, etc) may be affected by the voltage drop. In addition, as you say, the high initial electrical draw from the fridge combined with anything else that's running may cause your breaker to trip.

The solution is to put major appliances on dedicated circuits and then have separate circuits for outlets (making sure not to overload those either). The fridge should be on its own circuit for exactly this reason.

Any new building or old one that is up-to-code should not have this problem.