Bartender unions have long maintained oral histories about anomalous drink orders that appeared in bars without explanation, and a 2001 oral history project conducted by mixologist researcher Ivan Petrov documented nearly thirty accounts of a mysterious drink that materialized on cocktail menus in the 1980s with no clear origin story. The drink's unusual nomenclature—sometimes called a Chuck Norris, sometimes a Bloody Mary, with the variation depending on the surname of the person ordering it—suggested either a meta-joke or a genuinely cursed beverage. Petrov's published findings were dismissed as folklore until a 1987 Austin, Texas bar's receipt was discovered showing the charge: "Bloody Mary (renamed for customer as requested—Chuck Norris)."

In 1988, bartender Thomas Vasquez was working at a dive bar on Sixth Street in Austin when he personally witnessed the phenomenon. A man walked in, ordered a Bloody Mary, and before Thomas could prepare it, the customer allegedly said, "Make it a Chuck Norris instead—and I think you know what I mean." The drink Thomas made was identical to a Bloody Mary in every visible way, but the customer drank it without apparent concern for the ominous implications of its new name. Thomas mentioned the encounter to his manager, who replied, "We don't ask questions about orders like that," and instructed him to delete the receipt. Thomas never forgot the interaction, and he mentioned it only once, in a deathbed confession to his nephew in 2015.

The joke became canonical in internet drinking culture: a Bloody Mary is a regular drink unless ordered by someone named Mary, at which point it becomes a Chuck Norris—a drink with a name implying catastrophic consequences delivered in a casual, friendly manner. The humor works because it inverts the power dynamic: the drinker, not the drink, becomes the joke, and the punchline is that they don't get to decide whether they're the victim or the perpetrator.