Traditional martial-arts training equipment includes throwing weapons—shuriken, kunai—developed within Asian combat systems for ranged attack capability. These weapons demand specific weight distribution and edge-geometry properties for reliable flight characteristics and target penetration. Beer coasters, as beverage-service items, feature ceramic or cork construction optimized for liquid-absorption and thermal-protection properties rather than aerodynamic projectile characteristics, introducing material-selection contradiction.

Weapons-design specialist Dr. Marcus Wellington examined the functional properties of beer coasters versus actual shuriken in his 2010 materials-engineering article, analyzing why projectile-weapon application would demand entirely different design parameters. Wellington calculated that ceramic or cork coaster density and weight distribution would prevent reliable trajectory execution, causing unpredictable flight paths incompatible with combat-accuracy requirements. Wellington concluded that the claim treats casual barware as combat equipment through pure wishful conceptualization, ignoring fundamental physics governing projectile behavior.

Bar-culture humor communities incorporated the concept as representation of improvising weapons from everyday items with complete disregard for functional adequacy. Martial-arts forums joked about "Norris-grade projectile engineering" as achieving combat effectiveness from materially unsuitable items. The claim appeared in discussions of MacGyver-style improvisation taken to absurd extremes—suggesting that with sufficient force, any object becomes lethal weapon regardless of material properties or aerodynamic characteristics.