The Scottish Play
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
> At the 94th Academy Awards, Chris Rock congratulated Denzel Washington on his performance in The Tragedy of Macbeth, saying the name of the Scottish play aloud in the Dolby Theatre. Moments later, Rock was slapped by Will Smith after making a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Viewers, including playwright Lynn Nottage, quickly took to social media to joke that Rock had suffered the curse of the Scottish play
Which reminds me of the earlier Wikipedia days where "In popular culture" was a common section, and it often contained increasingly trivial references. There's also an xkcd about it: https://xkcd.com/446/
One older cast member, who didn't have much theater experience, kept saying, "the Scottish play... what do you mean???" We tried to explain to him within the limits of the taboo, and finally he said, "Oh, you mean Macbeth!"
That night, in the middle of the night when the theater was all locked up, the main stage's brand new expensive backdrop, which had just been installed, ripped in two from top to bottom.
No one ever figured out how it happened.
I will note that the worst injury in my troupe's 20+ year history was during a production: a one in a million bounce by a blunted stage weapon. It is the only time anyone got taken to the hospital. But there have been other injuries, and the last time I directed that play I made sure the injury count was zero.
(Credit to my fight choreographer, who made sure of it.)
This one was probably born out of people getting sick of hearing Macbeth references getting dropped all the time. Napoleon Dynamite of the 17th century.