Late Night with Conan O'Brien/The Walker, Texas Ranger Lever

The Walker, Texas Ranger Lever Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Actor(s)	Chuck Norris
Creator(s)
First Appearance
Last Appearance
Episode Count

The Walker, Texas Ranger Lever is a device used on Late Night with Conan O'Brien to mock the Chuck Norris crime drama Walker, Texas Ranger. The entire concept behind the lever is that Conan would periodically pull it to show out-of-context clips of the series for cheap comedy during show's opening or to escape an awkward moment with a guest.

Basic Information

In May 2004, NBC purchased the television division of Vivendi Universal Entertainment in order to create NBC Universal. As a result, many of the shows which Universal had the syndication or broadcast rights to were added to the NBC video vaults. Because programs like Walker, Texas Ranger were suddenly made royalty free and available to employees of NBC, Conan O'Brien introduced the "Walker, Texas Ranger Lever" as a recurring comedy bit.

The Lever is a simple cartoon-like lever not unlike something seen in a Wile E. Coyote scheme. Whenever Conan pulled the Lever, a typically out-of-context or otherwise absurd clip from the series would be shown like, for instance, Walker karate kicking a villain through a windshield. One famous clip from the series was Hailey Joel Osment uttering the words "Walker told me I have AIDS" after a completely unrelated sequence.

In summer 2004, the Lever was seemingly retired when Chuck Norris himself appeared on the show and shot Conan with a prop gun. After "shooting" Conan, Norris produced his own lever and pulled it, showing him beating up Conan behind the studio. The Lever was resurrected on March 8, 2005, but it eventually faded because, according to Conan, they were running out of clips to show.

The Lever produced several similar spin-off jokes, including the Knight Rider pull chain (which played Knight Rider clips) and the Beverly Hills Cop Theme button (which played the theme to Beverly Hills Cop). In May 2007, Conan brought back the lever to show clips of Slaughter in San Francisco, a low-budget kung-fu movie starring Norris from 1974. Conan remarked that the movie was so bad that Norris did everything he could to keep the movie out of America and succeeded, until that moment.

The lever returned a couple weeks after the San Francisco shows on May 24, 2007 as a way of mocking Norris' 1977 film Breaker! Breaker!. Since then, it has returned occasionally to lampoon other little known Norris movies like The Octagon. Despite Conan's infrequent mockery of his work, Norris occasionally appears in comedy bits, like in a Noches de Pasion con Señor O'Brien sketch on September 9, 2008.

Trivia

• Although Conan's premise for the lever said that Universal owned Walker, Texas Ranger, he's actually incorrect. The series was owned and produced by Sony Pictures Television and CBS, which originally broadcast the series. In actuality, Universal only owns syndication rights for broadcast on USA Network.
• During the 2008 presidential race, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee gained an endorsement from Norris. This lead to Norris and Huckabee costarring in a campaign commercial (titled "HuckChuckFacts") broadcast in some key primary states which riffed off of the "Chuck Norris Facts" internet meme. When Late Night came back from the strike break, the lever was resurrected once again to poke fun at this advertisement. In the parody, Huckabee gave the line "My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris." Then, an arm pulling a lever was superimposed onto the governor and a Walker, Texas Ranger clip played.