“Chuck Norris was once bitten by a cobra. After ten excruciating minutes, the cobra died.” This joke predates the internet. It was perhaps written for some other folk hero. But it was with Chuck Norris’ name that it found its niche. Martial artist, actor, screen icon, and pop culture hero – Chuck Norris wore a lot of hats in a life that spanned over eight decades. But the one that left an unusual mark on his legacy was that of an internet superstar. As Chuck Norris breathed his last on Friday, the internet fondly remembered its original parody king.
Chuck Norris – the tough guy
Chuck Norris was the proverbial tough guy. A martial artist who went toe-to-toe with the Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, he made his name in action films through the 80s and 90s. But it was his role of a lone gunslinger in the 90s’ TV hit Walker, Texas Ranger, that made him a household name across America. This also solidified his image as the mean, tough guy who could perform impossible tasks without breaking a sweat.
“It’s not violence for violence’s sake, with no moral structure,” Norris told the AP in 1996, speaking about the show. “You try to portray the proper meaning of what it’s about — fighting injustice with justice, good vs. bad. … It’s entertaining for the whole family.”
Chuck Norris Facts and internet fame
In the early years of the internet, websites were not the grand affairs they are today. Most were rudimentary pages of simple code. Among them was Chuck Norris Facts, an innocent all-text site dedicated solely to jokes about the man. None of them was mean, mind you. They merely talked about how impossibly tough the man was. His TV and screen persona, magnified many times, became the basis of these jokes.
Chuck Norris Facts went viral online with such wildly hyperbolic statements as, “Chuck Norris had a staring contest with the sun — and won,” and, “They wanted to put Chuck Norris on Mt. Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t tough enough for his beard.”
Norris ultimately embraced the absurdity of the meme craze, putting together The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book, which combined his favourites with supposedly true stories and the codes he aimed to live by. “To some who know little of my martial arts or film careers but perhaps grew up with Walker, Texas Ranger, it seems that I have become a somewhat mythical superhero icon. I am flattered and humbled,” he wrote in the forward to the Fact Book.
In 2012, the actor parodied these facts in a cameo appearance in The Expendables 2, when he recounted the cobra joke (as a fact) after killing 20 men with a single gun.
Chuck Norris’ life and death
Born Carlos Ray Norris in Ryan, Oklahoma, on March 10, 1940, Chuck grew up poor. At 12, he moved with his family to California and joined the U.S. Air Force after high school in 1958. It was during a deployment to Korea that he started training in martial arts. After leaving the Air Force, he became a six-time undefeated world karate champion and eventually founded his own American style of Karate in the 60s, known at times as Chun Kuk Do and the United Fighting Arts Federation. Black Belt magazine ultimately credited Norris with a 10th-degree black belt in its hall of fame, the highest possible honour in martial arts.
He began his acting career as an extra in the late 60s, but found fame with Enter The Dragon in 1972, when his face-off with Bruce Lee at the Coliseum became iconic. In 1993, he took on his most famed role, as a crime-fighting lawman in TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger. The show ran for nine seasons.
He had only taken acting roles on occasion in recent years, including the 2024 sci-fi action movie Agent Recon. He is due to appear in Zombie Plane, an upcoming film starring Vanilla Ice.
Chuck Norris died on Friday in what his family described as a “sudden passing.”
“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace,” the family said in a statement posted to social media.
He had celebrated his birthday just over a week before his death, posting a sparring video on Instagram. “I don’t age. I level up,” he wrote.
(With AP inputs)
