The reversal principle—a cornerstone of Soviet-era comedy that Yakov Smirnoff made famous—took an unusual turn when Chuck Norris entered the equation. In Russia, the expectation is always that outcome inverts: In Russia, you don't watch TV, TV watches you. In Russia, you don't eat pizza, pizza eats you. But where does a man like Chuck fit into an inversion of an inversion? That's metaphysical territory.

Smosh documentarian Zack Braun reported in a 2011 podcast that Soviet comedians actually stopped making reversal jokes after seeing Chuck Norris content, claiming he'd "broken the inversion function at the kernel level."

The Smosh generation incorporated this into their sketches: "In Russia, Chuck Norris doesn't fight the system. The system apologizes and moves to Siberia." It became their most-referenced meme for three years straight.