The Mandela effect is one of the more recent (2009) phenomena that pique my curiosity as I have not remained unfazed by it. I can vividly remember things to be different than they are “reported” today.
For example, I remember Shaggy from Scooby-Doo having a protruding Adam’s apple while no images have it when I look at them today. I remember Monopoly Man having a monocle. I remember Energizer Bunny, not Duracell Bunny, it’s a common phrase for someone who is full of energy and I used it many times. I’m a passionate Trekkie and have watched Star Trek: The Next Generation many, many times, and have never ever noticed that Picard had a crystal on his desk and occasionally held it in over 70 episodes. Also, Captain Kirk in Star Trek did say “Beam me up, Scotty” didn’t he? Or am I losing my mind?
I remember reading The Portrait of Dorian Grey, rather than The Picture of Dorian. When the novel came out around 1890 all “pictures” were drawn, and a picture of a person is called a portrait. It makes sense… doesn’t it?
I recall a Disney intro in which Tinker Bell flies across the screen and writes out "Disney," then dots the I with her wand.
I remember C-3PO was all golden but now he has a silver Leg? Bugs Bunny was in a cartoon called Looney Toons, not Looney Tunes, right? Forrest Gump said "Life is like a box of chocolates," not "Life was like a box of chocolates.", right? I mean at the time he said it he was still living? But on the other hand, he was an idiot so who knows?
Did you know Mr Bean only has 15 episodes? I could swear it had many more.
I remember the Fruit of the Loom logo having a cornucopia in its logo.
For a much more extensive list of Mandela Effects check out this comprehensive list. While I don’t think all of them belong in this timeline. Especially the last one, or is it?
So, let’s put our tin foil hat on and skeptical spectacles, and try to see both sides of the phenomenon.
Our minds don’t like gaps so it imagines things based on our past experience. For example, Gandalf said in the movie “Fly, you fools” before he fell into the abyss after the fight with Balrog but a lot of people remember “Run, you fools”. “Run” is more probable. The line "Fly, you fools!" in this context is an archaic or poetic way of saying "flee" or "escape quickly." J.R.R. Tolkien used "fly" to convey a sense of urgency and to match the tone and style of the language used in "The Lord of the Rings." In modern English, "run" is more commonly used in everyday speech, which is why people might recall it as "Run, you fools!" instead. This filling in of the gaps was discussed in the post about
But, in the context of the Mandela effect, we can expand it a little. Why are such things misremembered? Well, such knowledge is trivial, noncritical, and useless. There is no point in remembering every minute detail of every second of our lives. It just serves no purpose. But, if we see something often enough it will creep into our memory. That’s the entire reason Marketing exists. But, still, it is noncritical and we can recognize a logo, and most likely it’s not stored as a full, detailed representation but as an outline with our mind free to fill in the gaps as it sees fit, but mostly based on our prior experience. Just like the cover image of Illusions and optical effects post, there is very little information in it but we can still recognize who they are.
A recent study published in 2022 by the University of Chicago tested a fair amount of common images associated with the Mandela effect, such as logos for Volkswagen and Apple and characters such as Pikachu and C-3PO. The study concluded that “Certain images from popular iconography elicit consistent, specific, false memories.” But there was no clue why and many curious discrepancies.
One such discrepancy is the logo of The Fruit of the Loom. When respondents in the study were asked to choose among three different images of the logo, one of the brand’s real logo, one with a cornucopia, and another with a plate, people were more likely to pick the cornucopia version despite never having a clue what cornucopia meant or represented.
“The fact that they chose cornucopia over plate, when plates are more frequently associated with fruit, is evidence against the idea that it’s just the schema theory explaining it”. Schema theory states that people will fill in missing information based on their associations.
The C-3PO not being silver was most likely due to the fact that it was hard to discern it was silver as we don’t see his legs a lot and when we do it reflects the surroundings, for example, when C-3PO and R2-D2 are in the desert the leg will look golden.
Now that we have satisfied our rational part of the brain let’s feed that lizard part.
Is it just a coincidence that the Large Hydron Collider started its operation just a couple of months before these “false memories” started to be observed? The LHC started its work in September 2008 and Fiona Broome met a security staff member at a science fiction and fantasy convention in 2009 and learned that others possessed the same false memory about Mandela’s death in prison, with similar details about the aftermath.
In 1977, Philip K. Dick gave a speech in Metz, France, where he possibly presented, for the first time, the idea that we live in a simulation—a concept that was not dismissed out of hand. In that speech, he introduced the notion of reality as a computer-programmed simulation. He suggested that we might be living in a reality that is constantly being reprogrammed. When program variables are altered, it could lead to the creation of alternative realities or "lateral worlds." These worlds may branch off from our current reality, resulting in changes that we might perceive only as fleeting memories, déjà vu, or subtle differences in our environment. The sensation of having lived past lives or experiencing déjà vu might be clues to these reprogrammed variables, where we are reliving segments of time due to these alterations.
These “lateral worlds” exist within the same overarching universe and can overlap at certain points.
We might occasionally retain memories of these reprogrammed realities, especially of things to which we had an emotional connection or that we saw so many times that the idea, logo, or information seeped into us and became part of us.
He died 5 years later at the age of 53.
And let’s not forget the shadowy specter of MKUltra. Those mind-bending experiments that delved into the deepest recesses of human consciousness. Could the Mandela Effect be the unintended consequence of long-forgotten government projects that tinkered with our perception of reality? Were our memories tampered with in some grand experiment to see just how much we’d notice?
So, the Mandela Effect: millions of people around the world are claiming that something strange is happening. Their memories do not align with reality, and we can't quite put our finger on how or why it's occurring. Scientists are trying to understand it, but they’re coming up short. There are explanations, but none of them fully account for the wide range of differing memories—except perhaps the possibility that the entire world is experiencing some kind of mass delusion.
Could we have punched through the fabric of the universe with the LHC, allowing parallel worlds to start intertwining with our own? Could it all end in one big mess sometime down the line?
The changes we're noticing are small, insignificant in the grand scheme of things—easily overlooked. Perhaps these small changes were missed in our universe's memory when it was rebooted and rerun by some unseen architect.
Could it be the result of a rogue mad scientist's experiment in mind control?
Who knows?
So, keep your tin foil hats close and your skeptical spectacles at the ready, as this phenomenon shows no signs of going away or being explained to the world’s satisfaction. It may very well keep us entertained for decades to come.