Farewell, Chuck Norris: Teach the angels how to become living memes

American actor Chuck Norris has died. He was 86, and news of his hospitalization had spread in recent hours, followed shortly thereafter, on March 20, by the announcement of his passing, shared by his family on social media: “It is with sadness in our hearts that our family announces the passing of our beloved Chuck Norris yesterday morning. While we wish to keep further details private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and at peace,” the post reads: “To the world, he was a martial artist, an actor, and a symbol of strength. To us, he was a devoted husband, a loving father and grandfather, an incredible brother, and the heart of our family.” The statement continues: “He lived his life with faith, dedication, and care for the people he loved. Through his work, his discipline, and his kindness, he inspired millions of people around the world and left a lasting impact on many lives.”

The Life and Career of Chuck Norris, from Martial Arts to Memes

Born Carlos Ray Norris in Ryan, Oklahoma, in 1940, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after high school and was stationed in Korea, where he developed a passion for karate. Upon returning to the United States, he began teaching martial arts, even to celebrities like Steve McQueen, and after meeting the legendary Bruce Lee at a competition, it was the Chinese-American actor himself who launched his film career by casting him in the 1972 cult classic The Way of the Dragon (in Italian, L’urlo di Chen terrorizza anche l’occidente). In the 1980s, he starred in numerous action films in which he showcased his muscles and martial arts skills, such as Thunderbolt, Delta Force, and Magnum Force, while in the 1990s he cemented his iconic status thanks to the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger, which was very popular and also aired in Italy. He had been working until a few years ago, appearing in The Expendables series with Sylvester Stallone.

But Chuck Norris’s global popularity has been amplified in some ways—and has certainly weathered the ups and downs of Hollywood fame—thanks to a truly unprecedented phenomenon: memeification. In the early 2000s, even before the advent of social media but already at a time when newsletters and blogs were circulating, the so-called “Chuck Norris facts”—recursive jokes that drew inspiration from the actor’s extremely masculine, testosterone-fueled, and violent image to formulate absurd and hyperbolic claims—gained immense popularity and achieved a form of virality ahead of its time. In Italy, the phenomenon was introduced by Riccardo Vidoia and Massimo Fiorio, known as Mist and Dietnam, who dedicated a series of books to it. But the power of these jokes lay in the fact that anyone could copy the format and invent new ones: “Chuck Norris doesn’t read books; he stares at them until they give him the information he wants,” “Chuck Norris was bitten by a cobra. After ten minutes of agony, the cobra died,” “Chuck Norris’s tears cure any ailment. Too bad he never cries,” “On the seventh day, God rested. Chuck Norris: ‘Amateur.’”

Today we’re used to memes and GIFs—even AI-generated videos—that put celebrities in absurd situations. With Chuck Norris, it was a unique case, almost an experiment, even in how the explosion of such a phenomenon was handled. At first, he seemed to ignore it, then in 2007 he sued the Penguin publishing house, which had released a book under his name, and finally he ended up embracing the explosive irony himself, so much so that his character in The Expendables is a sort of caricature of a caricature.

At the same time, the stories about him made him likable and universally popular, largely obscuring the objective facts about his character. A staunch Republican and conservative Christian, he supported theories of intelligent design (and thus anti-evolution), the gun lobby, and initiatives to ban same-sex marriage. He was also a columnist for the far-right website WorldNetDaily and a proponent of certain conspiracy theories (such as the claim that Obama was not born in the U.S. and was therefore an illegitimate president). But paradoxically, all these facts take a back seat to the fictional ones, which made him both an icon and a laughingstock of an online world that has since exploded into even more extreme and caricatured trends.