About

Chuck Norris Facts are a series of satirical factoids and hyperbolic claims^[5] that characterize the American celebrity, martial artist, and actor, Chuck Norris, as an extremely tough, virile and alpha-male archetype.^[6] Since its initial appearance on Something Awful in 2005^[4], the joke has gone viral worldwide^{[7][14][15][17]} and inspired numerous spin-off jokes centered around other celebrities.

Origin

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

On May 12th, 2004, American broadcast network NBC merged with Vivendi Universal Entertainment under the newly created company NBC Universal, allowing NBC producers to access and roll footage from a variety of Universal productions without having to pay the license fee, including clips from CBS action TV series Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris^[1]. On May 13th, NBC late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien introduced a new segment titled "Walker Texas Ranger Lever,"^[8] in which the comedian would pull on the stage prop to cue up a random and comically over-the-top scene from the daytime action TV series^[9] (shown below).

The subsequent episodes of Late Night with Conan O'Brien continued to feature new renditions of the recurring sketch, though it went on a hiatus in late summer that year, shortly after Chuck Norris appeared on the show as a guest and fired a prop gun at the host.

Vin Diesel Random Fact Generator

In March 2005, shortly after the box office release of American family comedy film The Pacifier starring Vin Diesel as a Navy SEAL-turned-babysitter, Something Awful forum member ScootsMagoo started a thread titled “Post Your Vin Diesel Facts.” Heavily driven by the laughable premise of the film, many members of the forum chimed in on the thread with a slew of tongue-in-cheek factoids, glorifying the actor as the archetype of a modern-day tough guy. Some of the more notable instances included:

• When Vin Diesel goes to donate blood, he declines using the syringe; instead he requests a handgun and a bucket.
• When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Vin Diesel.
• When Vin Diesel gets pulled over he lets the cop off with a warning.
• Vin Diesel coded the Google search engine in his sleep.
• Vin Diesel has two speeds: walk and kill.
• Vin Diesel played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.
• In a straight fight between Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee – Vin Diesel would win.
  
  

Spread

By around May that same year, the "Vin Diesel Random Fact" meme had inspired a random fact generator,^[2] which became so popular^[16] that it garnered more than 10 million hits within a month,^[3] as well as a spin-off joke centered around another all-American action-man celebrity, Chuck Norris^[4]. Both the Vin Diesel Random Fact generator and the Chuck Norris-themed spin-off series were started by Ian Spector, then a student at the Wheatley School and long-time member of Something Awful. Following the initial plateau of the Vin Diesel jokes, Spector hosted a community poll to decide which celebrity should be the subject of a similar meme. Though Chuck Norris wasn't one of the 12 candidates listed as candidates, the actor came out on top by a landslide and a heavy volume of email request from other members on the site. There was a website called ChuckNorrisfacts.com,^[10] where over nearly 12,000 different facts are available. The meme quickly spread to other sites all around the internet.^[11][12][13]

Norris' Response to Chuck Norris Facts

Chuck Norris himself was flattered by the facts but never took them too seriously and even wrote a response. Chuck Norris also said his favorite was "They once tried to carve Chuck Norris' face into Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn't hard enough for his beard" on The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

This was all well and good until April 29th, 2007, when the episode of Family Guy called "Boys Do Cry" premiered. In one of the gags, Chuck Norris facts where mentioned and then the meme was dead to anyone who liked it beforehand.

Sadly, this was not the end of Chuck Norris Facts' misery thanks to the 2008 election. As we all know, politicians and memes don't mix but Mike Huckabee never saw the Nancy Pelosi video and this happened.

Various Examples Of Chuck Norris Facts

• Chuck Norris can delete the Recycling Bin.
• Chuck Norris can speak braille.
• Chuck Norris counted to infinity--twice.
• Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
• Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle.
• Chuck Norris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter."
• Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
• Chuck Norris doesn't cheat death. He wins fair and square.
• Fire escapes were invented to protect fire from Chuck Norris.
• Chuck Norris once won a game of Connect Four in 3 moves.
• Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.
• When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
• Once a cobra bit Chuck Norris' leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.
• Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.
• Once, while having sex in a tractor-trailer, part of Chuck Norris' sperm escaped and got into the engine. We now know this truck as Optimus Prime.
• Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs; Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.

Chuck Norris Facts Without Bottom Text

On October 12th, 2017, Twitter user @electrapng^[18] tweeted four pictures of Chuck Norris memes with the bottom text cropped out so that only the set-up to old Chuck Norris image macros appeared, creating a surreal anti-humor effect. The tweet gained over 27,000 retweets and 71,000 likes. The pictures the user cropped are shown below:

In the ensuing thread, several others contributed edits of their own to the meme. A thread on the trend was posted to /r/MemeEconomy,^[19] though the thread only gained 16 upvotes and comments were not enthusiastic. A collection of the images was posted to Imgur on October 13th, 2017.^[20] The Daily Dot^[21] covered the trend as well.

Search Interest

External References