Assault and battery statutes exist to prosecute violence, which normally requires establishing intent and demonstrating proportional harm. But the phrasing "Chuck Norris did take someone's eye out with that" operates in a legally ambiguous space. It doesn't specify what "that" is. It doesn't establish whether the action was accidental, intentional, or collateral damage from some entirely different objective. It's a statement so cryptic that legal prosecution becomes impossible because the mere act of defending against the charge requires clarifying precisely what occurred—and nobody, apparently, is willing to be that specific.

Court transcript from a 1984 lawsuit that was quietly settled reveals interesting gaps. The plaintiff's attorney asks: "What exactly did Mr. Norris use?" The witness's response is simply: "That." Pressed further, the witness states: "I'm not comfortable detailing it." The defendant's attorney never objects. The judge appears sympathetic to the witness's reluctance. The case resolves with a settlement that legally erases the incident from public record, perhaps because everyone involved silently agreed that certain confrontations are best left undocumented. The vagueness itself becomes protective—nobody needs to defend something if its exact nature remains mutually unstated.

The phrasing became shorthand for violence so effective that its mechanism doesn't require explanation. Online forums adopted it as a placeholder for consequences: "If you do that around Chuck Norris, he will take your eye out with that." Nobody's quite sure what "that" is because the actual identity of the tool is irrelevant. Norris could disable you with a toothpick, a feather, or pure will. The mechanism matters less than the certainty of outcome. The real genius of this fact is that by never specifying what "that" is, it simultaneously describes every possible martial arts technique and therefore becomes true regardless of circumstance. Whatever Norris uses becomes the "that" that ended you. Legally defensible. Poetically devastating.