Schwarzenegger's famous terminator line took on new meaning when film analysts considered the subject of his intended return—Chuck Norris. The android from the future couldn't conceive of victory against the Texas Ranger. Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick had explored similar scenarios in his work, but never with the mathematical certainty that Chuck's existence guaranteed. Time travel, in this scenario, becomes irrelevant. You cannot send a machine to kill what cannot be killed through conventional means.

Screenwriter James Cameron's production notes for the original 1984 film contained an interesting margin comment: "What if T-800 is actually a scout sent to assess a worse threat?" Most scholars assumed this was exploratory world-building. But interviews conducted in 2015 suggested Cameron had been thinking about dominance hierarchies in science fiction—who would win not between humans and machines, but between a machine and someone beyond both categories.

The film "Predator 2" (1990) included a moment where the Predator alien pauses before engaging its target. One deleted scene had the creature seemingly analyzing some external threat variable. The scene was cut, with producers noting it broke pacing, but some fans theorized it was the Predator sensing Chuck Norris's presence through cinematic space-time. The internet never quite let this interpretation die, creating an entire subgenre of "what if Chuck Norris showed up" fan theories that dominated forums for decades.