Shit happens

"Shit happens" is a common slang phrase, used as a simple existential observation that life is full of imperfections, or "C'est la vie". The minced oath form is "stuff happens". It is an acknowledgment that bad things happen to people for no particular reason.^[1] Etymology researchers have yet to determine when the phrase was first used or when it first appeared in print (the movie Forrest Gump posits a fictional explanation for how it originated). However, in a 1991 case concerning a bumper sticker that read "Shit happens", the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a state law prohibiting lewd or profane stickers and decals on vehicles was unconstitutional.^[2]

"Shit happens" in the media

• It was used for the first time on national (US) television by Mark Harmon, on an episode of Chicago Hope. According to reports at the time, censors agreed that "it happens" did not have the same impact as the "proper" phrase.
• The phrase was featured in the movie Forrest Gump during the titular character's run across the United States. While being asked questions by an excited fan, Forrest steps in a pile of dog feces. The fan tells Forrest he had just stepped in a big pile of shit, to which Gump replies, "It happens." to which the fan replies, "What, shit?" In the film, this incident inspires that fan to create the "shit happens" slogan, shown in the form of a bumper sticker on a pickup truck that enters an intersection and gets T-boned. In the TV version, the audio is blanked out to say "it happens" and the "SH" is blurred out on the bumper sticker.
• In a Dilbert comic strip, Dilbert builds a quantum computer capable of interacting with matter from another universe to solve complex equations. Dogbert notes that according to the chaos theory, Dilbert's change to another universe would shift its destiny, possibly killing every inhabitant, to which Dilbert replies "Shift happens."^[3]
• The phrase has inspired a list of jokes on religious and philosophical views, disseminated, widely on the Internet and sometimes known as the "Shit List". Each viewpoint (e.g. Catholicism, Buddhism, existentialism) is summed up by some variation on the phrase, for instance: "Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?"^[4]
• Duke Nukem commonly utters this phrase when he steps into feces (often left behind by the enforcer monsters) in Duke Nukem 3D.
• In an episode of the Irish sitcom Father Ted, the characters encounter a tough-talking milkman who has a prominently-featured sign in his truck bearing the phrase.
• In the movie Predator 2, the Predator utters "Shit Happens." right before falling off a building. (The Predator learned of the phrase when hearing a Jamaican gangster exclaim it.)
• T-shirts for teenagers are for sale which read "Shirt happens"; these are often banned from high schools for their similarity to the actual phrase.
• The 2000 horror parody Scary Movie had many scenes of people dying because of a serial killer. After a girl is killed, news stations arrive at her school. One of the policemen speaks out and simply says, "Uhh...You know? Shit happens muhfugga."
• Sith happens was jocularly used in fan circles as a placeholder for the name of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith when the movie's name had not yet been revealed. Three days before the release of the film (on May 16, 2005), an official trailer was posted with the phrase "In 3 days, Sith happens."^[5]
• World Wrestling Entertainment began using the phrase to describe an incident in which the stable D-Generation X poured human feces on a few of their rivals.
• On August 12, 2005, Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman remarked "Shit Happens" in a post-game press conference after injuring his ankle.^[6]
• In 2006 Volkswagen introduced a series of television advertisements in which actors are involved in a car accident. Emerging safely from the vehicle, one actor says, "Holy-," and then the slogan "Safe Happens" fades to the screen.
• Popular hardcore band Every Time I Die released a DVD entitled "Shit Happens" in 2006.
• Debbie Lazarus published "Sh*t Happens: The Book" in December 2006.
• A book by Stephen Clarke is entitled Merde Happens.
• In HBO's popular series, Sex and the City, one of the characters, Smith Jerrod, exclaims "Shit happens!" when his girlfriend, Samantha Jones, loses hair while performing oral sex due to the chemotherapy treatment she is receiving for cancer.
• Mirko Cro Cop used this phrase to tell his opinion about fight with Gabriel Gonzaga.
• In Malta it was introduced by Ivan Vassallo, during a committee meeting of the Malta University Historical Society.

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