In 2003, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” didn’t have the viewership or high profile guests that it does today. At the end of one particularly bad episode, Kimmel uttered the now-famous line, “I want to apologize to Matt Damon. We ran out of time."
Kimmel cracked the joke to make a producer laugh, and since he got a kick out of it, Kimmel started doing it every night to amuse him. Damon was surprised by the joke, as he had never even met Kimmel, but he has a good sense of humor, so he went along with it.
Over the years, Damon and Kimmel have become actual friends, and they even attended a baseball game in matching “I’m With Stupid” shirts. As the “feud” grew, their friends and partners joined in on the fun, making this joke last longer than the two of them — or anyone else — could have imagined.