There’s a form in current English
Then <X> happened or <X> happened,
where you transition the name of a thing (a person, a fictitious character, or object), to mean the dramatic effects of the arrival of the "thing".
The thing in question is so big its NAME refers not only to the thing or person itself but to a whole system of events, culture, or actions associated with it.
As an example in http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/george-lucas-red-tails.html we find "then Star Wars happened".
Well now, since I am old enough I lived through the evolution of this phrase in popular culture, I PERSONALLY ASSUMED THAT:
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You had the phrase shit happens.
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People (in the 80s?) started turning that around to <nice-word-here> happens, notably magic happens.
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Subsequently the form <NAME> happened was used when describing action movie characters, sport teams, dot com booms and the like.
But by all means, I COULD BE COMPLETELY WRONG.
Can anyone find any information on the actual origin of the name happens form?
(Note that the origin of "shit happens" is now well understood and documented. The question at hand is is, how did the quirky "and then name happened… originate? Was it (my guess) a play on "shit happens" — or am I just totally wrong to assume that?)
PS: Tragically, the OED seems not to have cottoned on to it yet: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/84057
Best Answer
Here is the entry for "Shit (Stuff) happens" in Doyle, Mieder, and Shapiro, The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012, Yale University Press):
The same reference work states that the allied phrase "Shit happens and then you die" emerged by 1991, as a paraphrase of dialogue from the film River's Edge.
As a side note, I observe that, when people get together to discuss a stunning development at work (for example), someone may say, by way of breaking the ice (or simply acknowledging the obvious), "Well, that just happened." I've been aware of this usage for only a couple of years, but it may be considerably older than that. I have no idea whether it began as a play on the truism "Shit [or stuff] happens," or whether it emerged independently of that phrase.
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UPDATE: To supplement the information cited above, I ran Google Books searches for “shit happens,” “stuff happens,” and various other “X happens” phrases. For the first two phrases, there wasn’t much beyond what The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs reported; but other phrases (notably “war happens,” “magic happens,” "life happens," and “[queer] things happen”) go back at least to the early decades of the twentieth century. On the strength of those results, I suspect that formulation of the “X happens” wording arose independently of “shit [or stuff] happens.”
With regard to the “then X happened” wording that the OP associates with “then Star Wars happened,” I investigated a single phrase of this type—“Vietnam happened”—and found relevant Google Books matches from 1970 and 1976. This form may go back considerably farther than 1970—though I haven’t run any relevant searches to find out—and in any case it may have no connection to the popular expression “shit [or stuff] happens.”
Following are some interesting matches that my Google Books searches turned up for the phrases “shit happens,” “stuff happens,” and “Vietnam happened,” as well as for the “X happens” alternatives “war happens,” “[queer] things happen,” “trouble happens,” “magic happens,” and “life happens.” I’ve put the relevant search phrase in each excerpt into boldface for ease of identification.
Shit Happens
From Carl Werthman, “The Police as Perceived by Negro Boys,” in The American City: A Source Book of Urban Imagery (1968):
Stuff Happens
From National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (U.S.), Proceedings of the Annual Conference (1966) [combined snippets]:
From Laird Koenig, The Dozens (1969):
From Ted Thackrey, The Thief: The Autobiography of Wayne Burk as Told to Red Thackrey (1971) [combined snippets]:
Vietnam Happened
From an unidentified article in Newsweek, volume 75, issues 18–26 (1970) [combined snippets]:
From Allen Freeman Davis & Harold D. Woodman, Conflict and Consensus in Modern American History, Volume 2 (1976) [combined snippets]:
War Happens
From Rose W. Lane, Henry Ford’s Own Story: How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power That Goes With Many Millions Yet Never Lost Touch With Humanity (1917):
From House Committee on Foreign Affairs, American Neutrality Policy (1939) [combined snippets]:
From Lewis O. Anderson, “Making Bogey of Nationalism” in National Republic (1940) [snippet]:
From Protestant Digest, volume 3, issue 10 (1941) [combined snippets]:
Things Happen
From H.G. Wells, Tono Bungay (1909):
And again, much later in the same book:
From Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941):
From Henry Miller, My Anchorage,” in Tropic of Capricorn] (1961), reproduced in Henry Miller on Writing (1964):
Queer Things Happen
From Henry F. Reddall, Wit and Humor of the American Bar (1905):
From a letter from Harriet L. Keeler to Henry C. King (January 17, 1912), reproduced in Harriet L. Keeler, Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them (1900/2005):
From B.M. Bower, Good Indian (1912):
From I.A.R. Wylie, “The Inheritors,” in Good Housekeeping (August 1922):
Trouble Happens
From Arnold Palmer, Arnold Palmer’s Golf Book (1961) [snippet]:
Magic Happens
From Bliss Carman, The Making of Personality (1906):
From Bronislaw Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic (1935) [combined snippets]:
From an unnamed book review in The Catholic Library World, volumes 23 & 24 (1951) [snippet]:
From Current Biography Yearbook (1960) [snippet]:
Life Happens
From “Microcosms” in The Century Magazine (July 1902):
From R.A. Scott-Thomas, The Making of Literature (1929):
From M. Lulofs, The Other World (1935) [combined snippets]:
From Oswald Schwarz, The Psychology of Sex (1949) [snippet]:
From Robert E. Spiller, A Time of Harvest: American Literature, 1910–1960 (1962) [snippet]: