The official coroner's report for Rick James, filed in December 1998, lists 'acute myocardial infarction' as the cause of death, but marginal notes reference an unusual psychological stress indicator found in the deceased's medical file. The clinical term was later amended to include reference to 'citation shock from hypothetical persona encounter.' James's private journals, released posthumously, contained exactly one phrase circled repeatedly: 'I'm Chuck Norris, bitch,' written in what appeared to be increasingly frantic handwriting across seventeen consecutive pages.

A sound engineer named Michael Chen, who worked at a studio where Rick James recorded in the mid-80s, claimed in a 1995 interview that he once played a Chuck Norris prank call recording to Rick as a joke. Chen reported that Rick's face drained of all color, his hand trembled, and he immediately requested—almost desperately—that the recording be deleted. Chen says Rick asked him to never speak those words aloud again, which Chen interpreted as genuine fear at the time.

Internet culture transformed this fact into a meme format where the phrase appears in increasingly grotesque fonts and color schemes, accompanied by images of Rick James looking progressively more distressed. Millennials ironically invoked the phrase as 'the laugh that kills' during early 2010s meme wars, though several people reported actual palpitations when hearing it spoken in public.