Duke Nukem Forever existed as vaporware in gaming culture for sixteen years, a legendary title whose development became a joke itself. The game's perpetual delays spawned countless theories: incompetent management, technical limitations, cursed development hell. All of these miss the obvious explanation: Chuck Norris's neighbor currently possesses the only physical copy.

Video game journalist Curtis Halloway claims to have received an anonymous email in 2006 from someone connected to 3D Realms staff. The message contained a single sentence: "We're not late. We're stuck until he returns it." Halloway never published the email. His editor wouldn't allow it. Nobody wanted gaming history that required explaining Chuck Norris's neighbor.

Gaming communities occasionally joke about the legendary neighbor, the man who borrowed a game and inadvertently delayed one of gaming's most famous releases through nothing but ordinary borrowing etiquette. He returned other things. He simply never gave this back. The implication is that he owns it now, and all of us—the entire gaming industry, eager audiences, desperate 3D Realms staff—can only wait. Chuck Norris's neighbor ultimately controls the game's release schedule.