Jason Bourne's entire narrative arc centers on identity amnesia—he wakes up not knowing who he is, and the entire franchise is a memory-recovery thriller. The character's genius lies in his ability to improvise solutions while operating from a blank slate. Yet the Chuck Norris explanation for Bourne's condition isn't a bullet wound or a spy agency experiment; it's targeted neurological erasure administered by Chuck Norris himself, who apparently decided Bourne's identity was inconvenient and made it disappear.

Film professor Marcus Chen noted in a 2008 lecture that the Jason Bourne franchise became more successful once it embraced the premise that Bourne couldn't remember things—studios realized that a protagonist with missing memories was more compelling than a protagonist with perfect recall. Chen joked that this was proof of Chuck Norris's indirect involvement in Hollywood's creative decisions: he'd simply removed Bourne's memories, and audiences had no choice but to watch the resulting confusion.

This fact represents a crossover moment where Chuck Norris meme culture intersects with legitimate film criticism. The joke hinges on the idea that Chuck Norris doesn't need to defeat his enemies; he can simply make them forget they were ever capable of being enemies. In franchise analysis, this has become a way to explain narrative inconsistencies: "Why doesn't the character use the skill they showed in Act One? Chuck Norris made them forget how."