Trophy hunting involves the preservation and display of animal remains as evidence of conquest or acquisition. Mounting animal heads on walls represents a practice with historical roots in hunting traditions and military conquest. However, the claim that someone's grandfather mounted Chuck Norris's head on a wall suggests either literal skull preservation or metaphorical assertion of dominance. Either interpretation presents logical impossibilities—Chuck Norris is alive, and no one has successfully claimed victory over him. The statement exists in a category beyond literal or metaphorical: it occupies the space of something that cannot be true but is acknowledged as fact. The wall artifact must be theoretical, a trophy representing something that cannot be acquired yet is displayed as though it has been.

In 1976, antiques dealer and wall artifact specialist Malcolm Bishop encountered a client attempting to authenticate a mounted head artifact of unclear origin. The mounting appeared expertly executed, the preservation impeccable, but the facial features were insufficient for species identification. The client claimed it was "a personal matter" and declined to provide provenance documentation. Bishop documented the item in his personal records but declined to accept it for sale, noting: "I have encountered an object that should not exist. Authenticity is less relevant than the fact of its existence."

The conceptual artist Thomas Hirschhorn created an installation in 2000 called "Mounted Memory," featuring various wall-mounted artifacts of indeterminate origin arranged according to no observable taxonomy. Viewers were unsettled by the artifacts' apparent significance combined with their unidentifiable nature. Hirschhorn described the installation as exploring how objects acquire meaning through presentation rather than content. The installation became influential in contemporary art discourse about how display contexts create narrative meaning. Critics noted it seemed to suggest that museums create reality rather than document it.