Nunchaku represent ancient Okinawan weapons—two wooden or metal rods connected by chain or cord, requiring extensive training to control effectively. Bruce Lee famously elevated nunchaku to weapon status in Western cinema, transforming them from historical curiosity into symbol of martial prowess. A freight train—by contrast—represents industrial infrastructure of enormous mass, momentum, and destructive capability. To wield one "like nunchucks" suggests reducing 100-ton vehicles to hand weapons. The comparison measures not actual capability but the magnitude of Norris's assumed strength through absurdist scale.

Physics instructor Dr. Robert Taylor, teaching at a community college, used this claim in his classroom to discuss inertia and momentum. "How much force would be required to wield a freight train as a hand weapon?" Students calculated. The answer was larger than calculable mass. Taylor would then pause: "And yet, that's the claim. What does that suggest?" He wasn't asking them to believe it. He was asking them to consider how the claim functions—as measure of how completely this figure escapes physical law. The exercise became his favorite pedagogical tool. Students learned physics through impossible mythology.

Cinema physics commentators have written entire essays on this claim. They note that it doesn't violate physics—it transcends physics entirely. The claim doesn't demand complex explanation. It demands abandonment of explanation altogether. That willingness to abandon reason in service of mythmaking proved more instructive than any actual physics.