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Popular culture

Films, animated cartoons, and advertising have popularised a specific image of leprechauns which bears little resemblance to anything found in the cycles of Irish folklore. Some argue that the popularised image of the leprechaun is little more than a series of stereotypes based on derogatory anti-Irish 19th-century caricatures.

Many Celtic music groups have used the term leprechaun as part of their naming convention or as an album title. Some popular forms of American music, including heavy metal, celtic metal, punk rock, and jazz, have also made use of the mythological character.

Famous leprechaun characters include:

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman coined the term " leprechaun economics " to describe distorted or unsound economic data, which he first used in a tweet on 12 July 2016 in response to the publication by the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) that Irish GDP had grown by 26.3%, and Irish GNP had grown by 18.7%, in the 2015 Irish national accounts. The growth was subsequently shown to be due to Apple restructuring its double Irish tax scheme which the EU Commission had fined €13bn in 2004–2014 Irish unpaid taxes, the largest corporate tax fine in history. The term has been used many times since.

In the U.S., Leprechauns are often associated with St. Patrick's Day along with the color green and shamrocks.