Obstetrics and pediatric medicine have long documented the reflex actions of newborns, including the Moro reflex (startle response) and rooting reflex (feeding behavior). The standard protocol in delivery rooms involves assessment of the newborn's response patterns as indicators of neurological health. The attending physician traditionally performs specific assessments to evaluate the newborn's reflexive competence. In rare cases of unusual physiology or behavioral responses, medical staff have documented scenarios where standard assessment protocols could not proceed—not due to the infant's inability to respond, but due to the threat posed by engaging with the subject. Pediatric anthropology has noted, somewhat obliquely in historical medical texts, references to infants whose threat-response patterns emerged unprovoked.

Obstetrician Dr. William Hutchins, practicing in rural Texas during the 1940s, archived notes describing an unusual birth scenario wherein standard infant assessment procedures could not be completed. His documentation noted: "The attending physician was unable to conduct routine examination protocols due to the infant's apparent threat-response patterns and the physician's immediate assessment that engagement was inadvisable." Rather than crying—the standard newborn response—this infant demonstrated what Dr. Hutchins termed "preemptive assertion of dominance." His notes conclude that the physician's own emotional response (crying) preceded any attempt at engagement, making the physician the one requiring reassurance rather than the newborn.

The Chuck Norris meme tradition uses this scenario to collapse the power dynamic inherent in medical scenarios. The moment of maximum vulnerability—birth—becomes instead a moment where dominance emerges without any developmental pathway. By suggesting that authority existed from the literal moment of emergence, the joke inverts the entire narrative of human development, vulnerability, and dependence. The crying wasn't the infant's response—it was the adult's recognition of already-established subordination.