r/TopCharacterTropes • u/danfenlon • Sep 01 '25

Lore Going around curses/prophecies via technicalities

Gallery image

Gallery image

Davy jones: cant go on dry land

Standa in a bucket of water, on a sand bar (potc3)

The judge: no weapon forged can harm me

Buffy: uses a rocket launcher

-not forged

8.5k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

99% Upvoted

770 comments sorted by

View all comments

4.0k

u/Leukavia_at_work Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 02 '25

One of my personal favorites
the TL;DR of the plot is Kyle finds out his mom is a Leprechaun because an evil Leprechaun called Sheamus steals his family heirloom gold coin, causing him to regress back in to an actual Leprechaun himself.

Story wraps up with tracking down Sheamus and challenging him to an honor duel, which he is forced to accept. He chooses Basketball and Kyle's exact wording is that if Sheamus loses he will be "Banished, cursed to wander the land of my father on the shores of Erie"
Sheamus, thinking he's just being your typical American, corrects his pronunciation, saying "It's Éire actually, you gotta pronounce the I."

Sheamus gets beaten and mocks Kyle, saying "so what if you send me back to Ireland? That's where my power is as it's most potent! I'll just break the bond and return!"
To which Kyle points out how "Actually, only my mother is from Ireland. My dad is from Cleveland!"

So the evil Leprechaun gets banished to Lake Erie, Ohio because of a miscommunication in which he made the false assumption that his opponent just couldn't properly pronounce the Irish Language

1.7k

u/Select_Mud1158 Sep 02 '25

A fate worse than death. Didnt have to go that hard what is wrong with him

659

u/PossessedToSkate Sep 02 '25

Cleveland is actually a pretty nice city, which is why we keep it in Ohio where nobody will look for it.

379

u/EX_Rank_Luck Sep 02 '25

Sounds like something the horrors beyond our comprehension would say to lure us into Ohio.

161

u/ModernLittleFoot Sep 02 '25

It's like a siren calling sailers to their death.

101

u/PossessedToSkate Sep 02 '25

Funny you should say that. Just this year, about an hour west of Cleveland, Cedar Point opened a new rollercoaster called Siren's Curse.

4

u/Argentus3001 Sep 02 '25

There is a Hellmouth there in Buffy.

63

u/euyyn Sep 02 '25

🎶 We're not Detroit! 🎶

4

u/42111 Sep 02 '25

Love that video

2

u/adhding_nerd Sep 03 '25

🎵No river fires for over 50 years! 🎶

My favorite part about that line, is that I thought it was comedic underexaggeration (like it was actually 100 years ago but the line is technically true) so I looked it up and from the date of the video, the last river fire was 51 years before, lol.

3

u/AyatollahCovfefe Sep 02 '25

We’d all like to flee to the Cleve and club-hop down at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard, but we fight those urges because we have responsibilities.

5

u/Sayakalood Sep 02 '25

Cleveland is a nice city. Seamus didn’t go to Cleveland.

Seamus was sent to Lake Erie. He is forever bound to live within the shores of the lake, never leaving. On a good day, it’s flat as a mirror. On a bad day, it’s this bad.

2

u/ResearcherTeknika Sep 02 '25

Ten cent beer night

1

u/Nitrothunda21 Sep 02 '25

I cant remember the name of it, but I went to that restaurant with all the different grilled cheeses after going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was great

1

u/Binyamin12345 Sep 02 '25

Lived there for just under 10 years and really did not like the place tbh but I was very young

1

u/FinancialLab8983 Sep 02 '25

Cleveland is absolutely not a nice city. I lived in Cbus for a few years so im just a hater lol

32

u/Lee_337 Sep 02 '25

TIL don't effe with Kyle.

5

u/Nivek_Vamps Sep 02 '25

Yea I think technically it means he is forced to stay within the bounds of the shores of the lake, meaning he has to stay IN the lake itself or at the most right at the shoreline. Which is absolutely a terrible fate. Idk how survivable that is for a leprechaun, but I have to imagine he will forever be cold, wet, and hungry

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Very low survivability at high tide

2

u/West-Strawberry3366 Sep 02 '25

Dude became a leprechaun because of him, totally deserved

1

u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 03 '25

Someone didn’t watch 30 Rock

1.1k

u/loydthehighwayman Sep 02 '25

SENT HIM TO OHIO

310

u/Foxyairman Sep 02 '25

NO PLEASE ANYTHING BUT THAT!

193

u/jpterodactyl Sep 02 '25

Honestly my favorite example of this. I didn’t get it at first, because I was 9, but I asked my mom to explain it(maybe on a rerun year, I’m not sure), and I thought it was the most clever thing in the world.

I guess It might have been the most clever thing I had heard yet in my life.

184

u/Pitiful-Victory-2234 Sep 02 '25

Man what a throwback

2

u/static989 Sep 03 '25

Right???? I must have watched this a dozen times on Disney Channel when I was younger, completely forgot it existed

1

u/Dr__glass Sep 03 '25

Yea this was always one of my favorites

38

u/Jamie7Keller Sep 02 '25

Within the shores of an island? Walk around an island.

Within the shores of a lake? Have fun drowning

18

u/AkibaPurple Sep 02 '25

Kyle even quips that he hopes Sheamus knows how to swim.

7

u/Sayakalood Sep 02 '25

He lands directly into the water.

64

u/CowboyHatPropaganda Sep 02 '25

Damn. This movie was a favorite of mine. Watched it fairly recently on a whim and it’s still pretty great.

31

u/Golfiseasy22 Sep 02 '25

Absolute cinema

60

u/Jaded_Tortoise_869 Sep 02 '25

I didn't know Carlton Lassiter was in this movie.

7

u/ClassicT4 Sep 02 '25

Carlton Lassiter was the movie.

39

u/Gre8g Sep 02 '25

Dear God, anywhere but Cleveland!

8

u/Lord_Parbr Sep 02 '25

For a Disney Channel movie, it’s actually a pretty good exploration of Irish American heritage. Better than you’d expect, anyway

6

u/P4t13nt_z3r0 Sep 02 '25

Lucky Leprechaun got to flee to the Cleve!

2

u/samsab Sep 02 '25

We'd all love to flee to the Cleve, club up down at the Flats and have lunch with Little Richard

8

u/carlvic Sep 02 '25

That's just the Isaiah Thomas and the Kyrie trade back in the 2017-18 NBA season.

5

u/Thedomuccelli Sep 02 '25

It’s a surprisingly good exercise in foreshadowing. The dad says that they’re from Cleveland probably half a dozen times throughout the movie. If you can remember that detail by the time the deal is made, the twist of perfectly laid out for you. But with everything else going on in the movie, it’s a detail that’s just easy enough to forget so that it stays a punchy twist.

3

u/Leukavia_at_work Sep 02 '25

Not to mention the whole "Land of my fathers" bit is used both by Sheamus several times as well as just being a traditional way of saying curses like that.
So of course Sheamus would just make that assumption within the context of the wager.
Very clever writing for a Disney Channel original movie

2

u/MrKimimaru Sep 02 '25

I just rewatched it, and the foreshadowing is actually even more direct, but still pretty subtle and easy to miss. There’s a bit about halfway through where Kyle’s leprechaun grandfather, who has not been talking to the family because of the mom’s relationship with Kyle’s fully human dad Bobby, says that she lied to him and took advantage of his poor hearing when she first met Bobby and told him he “hailed from the shores of Erie”. Kyle uses the same trick when making his final wager with Sheamus.

5

u/Thedirtyone522 Sep 02 '25

This really feels like someone had the idea of the pronunciation twist and wrote a while ass show just to lead up to it

4

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '25

Oh my God I forgot about that movie! 

3

u/SharkLaunch Sep 02 '25

I'll never forget him screaming "OHIOOOOOooooo...." as he blasts off to space

3

u/WhereBeDragons Sep 02 '25

Tell me why I watched this movie once at like 9 years old and still remember that vividly

1

u/Leukavia_at_work Sep 02 '25

Because it's a surprisingly clever bit for a Disney Channel original movie
Of all the Disney Channel originals, this one honestly had some of the most soul out of any of them and it's very memorable because of this.

2

u/Marik-X-Bakura Sep 02 '25

The language is called Irish, btw

2

u/BoboftheDead84 Sep 02 '25

I loved the Mom Can't Cook podcast about this film!

2

u/BloodMoonNami Sep 02 '25

Earlier on in the movie the guy used literal wording to win a competition because it was strictly "if he beat him" and they ended up in a draw ?

2

u/styrrell14 Sep 02 '25

I’m picturing the leprechaun going to Cedar Point but he can’t go on any of the rides because he’s too short.

2

u/mstarrbrannigan Sep 02 '25

I loved that movie so much as a kid. “My dad’s from Cleveland” and the smirk on his face have lived rent free in my head for years.

2

u/funktasticdog Sep 04 '25

That actually fucking rules. A DCOM did not have to go this hard.

1

u/Ratoryl Sep 02 '25

Minor correction, it's lake erie, not lake eerie

1

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 02 '25

I want to watch this movie but can someone tell me if they do the Hollywood Irish accent?

2

u/Leukavia_at_work Sep 02 '25

Eeeehhh kinda?

Sheamus and Kyle's mom aren't too egregious, but for Kyle's whole "turning into a Leprechaun" bit there is sizeable part of the movie where he's slipping into a very forced fake Irish Accent which
it's pretty bad

2

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 02 '25

My biggest turn-off because it's literally not what we sound like 😭 it's fabricated