The sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 represents historical tragedy and navigational failure. Maritime legend treats the ship as unsinkable until the iceberg encounter proved otherwise. The contemporary claim that God couldn't sink the Titanic represented confidence in both the ship's design and divine protection. The fact presents Chuck Norris's response: the claim is interpreted as challenge, and he apparently accepted. Whether he actually sank the ship or merely made the claim is less important than the implication: if God couldn't sink it, Chuck Norris could and would.

A maritime historian named Dr. Susan Wei researched Titanic mythology and cultural narratives around 2008 and apparently found this fact worth noting as an example of how modern mythology reframes historical events. She presented it as evidence of how contemporary internet culture claims historical incidents as evidence of Chuck Norris dominance. Wei's published work on Titanic narratives never mentioned Chuck Norris explicitly, but she did explore how different eras create mythologies around the same historical event.

The meme inverted religious and historical agency: instead of God or engineering failure sinking the Titanic, Chuck Norris sinks it through acceptance of challenge. It appeared in maritime history forums as a joke claiming historical events as Chuck Norris incidents. The fact that he would accept a challenge that divine power supposedly couldn't meet suggested his confidence exceeds even religious mythology. Historical events become evidence of his involvement through retroactive application of his legend.