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The Mandela Effect: Post Your (Debatable) Memories

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SOLDIER

Member
You've probably heard about The Mandela Effect by now, if not here's a refresher: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-mandela-effect

James Rolfe (aka The Angry Video Game Nerd) recently did a video where he looks back at his own faulty memories with some of his favorite movies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltst5EDnde4

Inspired by his video, I thought we could have a fun thread listing all of our debated memories concerning popular works of fiction. Remembered something wrong? Perhaps you'll find a kindred spirit who shared your faulty memory (or came from the same universe you originated from).

I've got two examples, both coming from cartoons:

1. Thundercats: In the episode titled "Sixth Sense", there's a part where Cheetara is convulsing in pain on a medical bed while the alien spaceship is communicating with her telepathically.

For the longest time, I could have sworn there was a part during this sequence where her boobs light up. I distinctly remember flashing lights darting from her left and right breasts, seizure-style.

I was at a very young age when I saw this, and before you go there, it was well before I would "take notice" of that sort of thing. I remember my eyes darting out by surprise over it and everything, and this stayed in my memory as one of those "you couldn't get away with it now" examples of 80's cartoons.

Ironically, I had completely forgotten that Cheetara and the other Thundercats were full-on naked during the first episode.

2. G.I. Joe The Movie (Animated):

During the climactic fight between the last remaining Joes and Cobra-La's elite (yeah, we all remember the Sgt Slaughter speech, no way that would ever be scrubbed from anyone's memory), there's a scene where Jinx and Pythona are fighting near the fan-named "Penal Clam" (aka "I can't believe there's no DA fan-art of this thing. I mean seriously, look at it").

During the bit where Pythona kills the creature with her acid nails, I had always remembered the monster retaliating by swallowing her up, Pythona screaming just before being consumed, never to be seen again. This was another thing I caught once at a real young age, and subsequent re-watches later debunked my claim, but it was still something I had vividly remembered.
 
Sinbad being a genie in a movie. When there was a post about it on NeoGaf I said, "Wait.. no, Sinbad was definitely a genie in a movie and it was Shazam." I didn't even post in the thread because I was so sure of it, and my world was turned upside down. I didn't confuse it with Shaq or Kazaam. It was a weird moment for me. I even did like a half hour of research thinking maybe he was a genie in a bad TV show for an episode and I confused it or something. But, no, i just made it up whole cloth in my brain,a long with hundreds (thousands?) of other people as well.
 

Blobbers

Member
Sometimes I'll see an actor for the first time but get a strange feeling that I've seen them a million times before. It happened to me with Jason Alexander when I first saw Seinfeld.
 

Salamando

Member
Sinbad being a genie in a movie. When there was a post about it on NeoGaf I said, "Wait.. no, Sinbad was definitely a genie in a movie and it was Shazam." I didn't even post in the thread because I was so sure of it, and my world was turned upside down. I didn't confuse it with Shaq or Kazaam. It was a weird moment for me. I even did like a half hour of research thinking maybe he was a genie in a bad TV show for an episode and I confused it or something. But, no, i just made it up whole cloth in my brain,a long with hundreds (thousands?) of other people as well.

But it does exist

FG9LT4d.jpg
It's from ThinkGeek's April Fools'
 

SOLDIER

Member
Sinbad being a genie in a movie. When there was a post about it on NeoGaf I said, "Wait.. no, Sinbad was definitely a genie in a movie and it was Shazam." I didn't even post in the thread because I was so sure of it, and my world was turned upside down. I didn't confuse it with Shaq or Kazaam. It was a weird moment for me. I even did like a half hour of research thinking maybe he was a genie in a bad TV show for an episode and I confused it or something. But, no, i just made it up whole cloth in my brain,a long with hundreds (thousands?) of other people as well.

It's the first thing James covers in his video :)
 
I don't know if it's the same thing but for some reason up until high school I thought I had once owned a small model of Jimbo from Jimbo and the jet set that could actually fly. It took me forever to realise how that couldn't be true. I remember asking my mum what had happened to it and she had no idea what I was talking about.
 
I always thought at some point in the original Star Trek series, Kirk says 'Beam me up Scotty.'

But yeah, he never says it like that exactly.
 
I do remember thinking that I watched a film where John Malkovich had playing a jewel thief but I couldn't find it on imdb.
 

Tedesco!

Member
I have a very vivid memory of Ben and Luke hiding under the table from the stormtroopers at the Cantina in A New Hope. I know it didn't happen, but I remember it very clearly.
 
fruit loops
shazam
berenstein

p sure we're all in a big simulation but on different servers and some of them just haven't been updated yet
 

Fat4all

Banned
I coulda swore Squirrel Nut Zippers "Hell" was used for a TV shows opening, but I can't find anything like that.
 
I have a very vivid memory of Ben and Luke hiding under the table from the stormtroopers at the Cantina in A New Hope. I know it didn't happen, but I remember it very clearly.

I'm guessing your brain just combined the cantina scene with them hiding in the smuggler's hold in the Falcon.

I coulda swore Squirrel Nut Zippers "Hell" was used for a TV shows opening, but I can't find anything like that.

AHHHHH THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR

edit: Wikipedia says it was used in the pilot for Dead Like Me. That seems a little one-off and obscure but i did watch a couple of episodes of it, so it's possible.
 

Rygar 8 Bit

Jaguar 64-bit
I don't know if it's the same thing but for some reason up until high school I thought I had once owned a small model of Jimbo from Jimbo and the jet set that could actually fly. It took me forever to realise how that couldn't be true. I remember asking my mum what had happened to it and she had no idea what I was talking about.

sounds like a dr wondertainment product are you sure your not from [DATA EXPUNGED]
 

Guevara

Member
For me, it's Nike/Adidas

It used to be that Adidas were kind of lame, the kind of shoes your dad would wear. You might buy a cheap retro pair out like Gazelles of nostalgia, or buy them on sale at the mall. Meanwhile Nike had all the cool shoes, people lining up for each release, never able to get the coolest ones.

But it's the exact opposite

Nike is coasting on nostalgia, Jordan rereleases are on sale, your dad probably wears some Air Monarchs he got at the mall, and everyone is lining up going crazy for the new exclusive Adidas drops.

When did that happen?
 
I remembered Blazing Saddles having a scene where someone shoots a gun and the bullet ricochets off of a crazy number of things before finally hitting someone. It must have been from another Western comedy.
 

PSqueak

Banned
Rugrats had an episode where they're trying to teach Chuckie to use the potty to little success, there is an scene where he thinks he's controlling his needs and steps up from the potty.

What i misremembered happening: Chuckie accidentally poops outside the potty with actual showing of the poop.

What actually happened: Chuckie says "uh oh" and they dub in a peeing sound.
 

eXistor

Member
"Many Bothans died to bring us this information" in my mind was 100% a line from a New Hope in reference to the first Death Star. In reality it's from Return of the Jedi in reference to the second Death Star. Only since Rogue One came out did I realize this.
 
Shuhei Yoshida

Been a Sony fan for two and a half decades.
Been on Neogaf for over a decade.

I swear on my family's life this man did not exist until just before the PS4 launch...Yet somehow, he was this huge gaming figure that everyone else knew and respected.
 

140.85

Cognitive Dissonance, Distilled
The Mandela Effect makes a ton of sense when you look at how the brain stores memories.
 

NekoFever

Member
I've never understood the name of this effect. Like, I've never heard anyone think Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 80s, let alone that misconception being widespread enough to name false memories after it. And how could you have been old and intelligent enough to remember Mandela being in prison in the 80s but have missed his release and him being President of South Africa for most of the 90s?
 
So, Rankin and Bass did an animated adaption of The Hobbit. After, Ralph Bakshi's adaption of The Fellowship of the Ring (and part of Two Towers), Rankin and Bass then finished it off with an adaption of Return of the King.

I objectively know it doesn't exist...but my brain swears there's a Rankin and Bass adaption of Fellowship of the Ring. I can even remember specific scenes from it (Bilbo getting possessive of the ring before handing it over to Frodo, and Galdalf telling Frodo to leave the ring under its glass on the mantle...for example).

...and yet this version of the movie doesn't exist.
 
The Froot Loops one blows me away. Not the fact that it's always been Froot Loops, but that so many people didn't realize that.

I'm 38 and since I was a kid, I've always hated that stupid spelling because I've always been anal retentive about companies purposely misspelling things (yeah, I know--first world problems).
 
The Froot Loops one blows me away. Not the fact that it's always been Froot Loops, but that so many people didn't realize that.
It's a dumb name. The human brain naturally auto corrected it to Fruit Loops. It requires a significant amount of brain power to process the fact that someone out there was stupid enough to come up with that name.
 
I've seen her name written down hundreds of times before, but I didn't realize that Milla Jovavich has two L's in her first name until very recently. Probably just me, though.
 

Toothless

Member
When I was six, I went to go see Lilo &Stitch in theaters with my family. I swear this anytime the ending of that film comes up, but there's no proof of it anywhere. I remember in this shot:

Gantu was in it in the theatrical release. I remember the councilwoman telling Gantu along with Jumbaa and Pleakley that he would have to stay on Earth. I swear I remember then in the closing montage, Gantu helping rebuild the house, him being at the Christmas dinner, and him just generally being part of the new Ohana at the end of the movie. My guess has always been that they edited him out of the DVD release so he could be the villain in the TV show, but only about a few years ago did I realize there's no record of him staying on Earth at the end of the original film.

It still always bothers me whenever I rewatch Lilo & Stitch
 
I have a memory of Final Fantasy VII that a few of my friends share, but none of us have been able to replicate this scene or found it on YT or anything.

With the man in the pipe in Midgar, me and maybe four other friends remember that there was a way to trigger alternate dialogue with Aeris about him. She'll ask Cloud if there's anything he can do, so Cloud tries some shit, but I guess it doesn't work and you find yourself back outside the pipe. Afterwards, if you try to go back in, Aeris stops you and says, "There's nothing you can do for him." It was particularly annoying because it wasn't even like, you had to be right up on the pipe's shit. If you got anywhere near that thing, she would stop you. Like, the trigger area was way wider than the pipe itself or something.

We all remember seeing this scene, and we all remember it happening randomly on playthroughs without really knowing what triggered it. I've played and beaten that game probably like two dozen times over the course of my life, and I haven't seen it since I stopped playing FF7 on an actual PSX machine. If not for other people confirming that they've seen this too, I would've thought I was crazy.
 

bengraven

Member
May be an explanation but when I saw Dracula in theaters I swear that the scene where Anthony Hopkins is the priest as Vlad curses god that there are subtitles.

All home video versions? No subtitles.
 
I could swear Tim Curry died. I thought there were even retrospectives about his acting career and tributes to him from Rocky Horror fans. I even went to a used bookstore and there was an audio book read by him and I thought 'aww, poor guy, r.i.p.' Then one day someone mentioned him, I looked him up and he's still around!!
 
I had this vivid memory from when I was a young kid of a Barney the Dinosaur movie or feature-length special that aired in primetime on NBC instead of PBS. I remember Barney and the kids get into this hot-air balloon/airship thing and go to the moon. They meet the Man in the Moon and the whole thing had this bizarre art style.

I googled it when I got older but couldn't find anything of it existing. However, I did end up watching The Adventures of Baron Munchausen when I was in high school, which had a very similar sequence. So, my going theory is that as a kid "Barney" and "Baron" sounded the same to me, and my brain altered the rest of the movie to match.
 

jon_dojah

Banned
Mirror mirror on the wall being magic mirror on the wall.

That shit was mirror mirror...

I've been following ME for almost 2 years and this has always been the most convincing one of all of them alongside Darth Vader saying "Luke I AM your father" in my reality.

Of course just like most people it all started with Berenstein Bears when I first heard of the ME from my best friend.
 

tuffy

Member
I had a vivid memory of 70s Doctor Who in which Sarah Jane was being pursued through some darkened tunnel area, then she wound up outside with a Sontaran not far behind. But in reality, my memories had blurred together the darkened space station from "The Ark in Space" and the location work from the next story, "The Sontaran Experiment".

I had a big "ah ha" moment when I rewatched them and realized what had happened.
 

Guevara

Member
I could swear Tim Curry died. I thought there were even retrospectives about his acting career and tributes to him from Rocky Horror fans. I even went to a used bookstore and there was an audio book read by him and I thought 'aww, poor guy, r.i.p.' Then one day someone mentioned him, I looked him up and he's still around!!

Wow, I thought he had passed too.
 
I remember one of the stories from Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction as this one where a guy is desecrating a cemetery, and this creepy lady in black sings to him a song that ends with, "no respect for anyone—not even the dead."

But there is no such story.

It's from a different show, whose title I don't remember.

EDIT: Wait. Google is now saying it was Beyond Belief!? Did I double Mandela Effect myself?
 
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