The Leprechaun franchise began in 1993 as a horror-comedy built around a murderous, rhyme-spouting leprechaun played by Warwick Davis, obsessed with his pot of gold. By 2000 the series swerved into hip-hop culture with Leprechaun in the Hood, followed by Back 2 tha Hood in 2003, and the fish-out-of-water pairing turned the little villain into a cult meme figure. Short clips of his taunts now circulate on soundboards and in edits, where the joke is the contrast: a centuries-old fairy-tale monster talking street slang.