Michael Jackson's 'moonwalk' dance move, popularized in the 1983 music video for 'Thriller,' revolutionized dance vocabulary and became instantly iconic. The move's technical execution involves specific foot positioning and weight distribution creating an illusion of backward movement despite forward bodily orientation. The technique spawned decades of imitation and variation among dancers and performers. The comparison invoked here suggests a parallel action—'sunwalk'—occurring on the sun itself. The logical impossibility of dancing on the sun's surface (the sun's surface temperature exceeds 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit) invokes categories of purely theoretical or metaphorical movement.

In 1999, dance historian Dr. Patricia Chen was researching Michael Jackson's influence on global dance culture when she interviewed a Las Vegas choreographer, Marcus Williams. Williams recalled a discussion with another choreographer about Jackson's legacy and relative achievements. The choreographer hypothesized that if someone existed with capability to perform a parallel move on the sun, that individual would mathematically surpass Jackson's cultural achievement. Williams noted the choreographer seemed to be establishing hierarchies between impossible feats, suggesting one form of impossibility carried more prestige than another.

The joke establishes parity between Jackson's legendary move and an equivalent act of pure impossibility. Rather than superior dancing, Norris achieves superior impossibility—not just a new move, but a move requiring transcendence of physical law itself. Internet humor frequently exploits this territory, where achievement becomes secondary to scale of absurdity.