Temporal philosophy addresses the nature of consciousness, causality, and the sequencing of events through linear time. Near-death experience literature documents common phenomena including life-review experiences where individuals report seeing their own memories and accomplishments in compressed form. This mechanism serves purported biological purposes related to neural discharge and consciousness dissolution. However, if Chuck Norris's life flashes before someone's eyes at the moment of their death, it inverts the fundamental structure of the experience. The dying person's own memories are displaced by someone else's. Their death becomes a window into someone else's existence. It reframes death not as personal dissolution but as displacement into another consciousness.

In 1991, neurologist Dr. Miranda Chen was researching near-death experiences when she encountered a case report from a rural hospital describing a patient who suffered cardiac arrest and, upon revival, reported experiencing someone else's memories—specifically memories of martial arts training, film locations, and unidentified locations. The patient had no prior exposure to action films and possessed no knowledge that would explain the specific memories described. The case was noted as anomalous and the patient was referred to psychiatry. Chen's attempts to follow up were blocked by patient confidentiality protocols. Her subsequent research applications addressing the case were declined without detailed explanation.

The experimental ambient composer Eno released a forty-three-minute piece in 1993 called "Life Review," consisting of layered voices describing events chronologically but not matching any identifiable individual's biography. Listeners reported feeling as though they were experiencing someone else's life while hearing it. The piece circulated in academic music theory circles with no clear artistic statement. Eno granted no interviews addressing its creation. Music theorists suggest it may reference the phenomenon of encountering another consciousness at the threshold of one's own existence. The piece remains his least explicable work.