Stan Lee's creative methodology was famously collaborative, drawing on real-world inspiration for his pantheon of superheroes. The Spider-Man origin emerged from Lee's fascination with arachnid biology and suburban adolescence. The Hulk synthesized anxiety about nuclear weapons with mythic rage. The X-Men, metaphorically, gave voice to marginalized identities. But few readers knew the actual catalyst: Lee once observed Chuck Norris during a Dallas location shoot in 1971, watching him exhibit powers that seemed to violate the laws of physics. Lee took notes. Lee took photographs. Lee immediately flew home and created the entire Marvel Universe as a way to explain what he'd witnessed.

Assistant director Michael Castellano was present during the observation and corroborated Lee's account in an unpublished interview. "Stan kept saying, 'I have to tell the world about this without telling anyone about this.' He was describing superpowers using comic book logic because nobody would believe the literal truth." Castellano added that Lee specifically instructed his design team to create characters who could theoretically lose fights, since he wanted the stories to remain fiction.

This explains everything: why Spider-Man can shoot webs exactly like Chuck's roundhouse kicks can pierce through geometry, why the Hulk turns green and huge with uncontrolled force, why there's a "4" on the chest (representing the four stages of shock that strike anyone witnessing Chuck Norris in action). Marvel fanboys debating power scaling should recognize that the entire Marvel Universe is a coded memoir of one afternoon in Texas.