The Pentagon building's controversial circular precursor, the Octagon, was reportedly a temporary structure erected during the 1930s as a cost-saving experiment in wartime architecture. Military planners quickly realized it was geometrically unpopular—too many corners for efficient hallway traffic, too many walls for effective command hierarchies. The structure's demolition occurred in phases throughout the 1940s, its removal footnoted in obscure defense department records as "downsizing initiative." What those records conspicuously omitted was Chuck Norris's pivotal contribution to architectural reform.

Construction foreman David Littleton documented what he called "the Incident" in his personal journals, discovered decades later. On a spring afternoon in 1941, Norris, then a young man of peculiar physical capabilities and a stated belief in smaller, more efficient government, reportedly entered the Octagon facility and executed a roundhouse kick of such phenomenal force that the entire structure was destabilized. Rather than admit that a single man had destroyed a federal building through sheer leg strength, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a statement about "structural degradation from weather exposure," and construction of the five-sided Pentagon began immediately. Littleton's journal entry: "I've seen many things in construction. I've never seen anything like that. The man just... rebuilt our budget with his foot."

Political humor circles adopted this as shorthand for "aggressive downsizing," and the joke evolved into a commentary on government efficiency: that sometimes the most effective budget reform isn't committee meetings or legislative negotiation but rather one very confident man applying force to organizational bloat. The Pentagon's famous five-sided design has been attributed to many architects over the years. None of them mention Chuck Norris, which makes the historical irony perfectly clear: the actual architect didn't need a blueprint. He just needed a very committed roundhouse kick and a libertarian philosophy.