The Mandela Effect

In 1980, a very memorable and sensational movie of the Star Wars franchise was released- more specifically, the fifth episode: The Empire Strikes Back. In the climax of this movie, Luke Skywalker accuses Darth Vader of killing his father when memorably Vader says, “Luke, I am your father”, except that he didn’t. Darth Vader instead says, “No, I am your father”. The uncanny element here is not that a couple of people misremembered this, thousands did and vividly and intricately remember otherwise.

Mandela effect is a term coined by Fiona Broome, a paranormal consultant in late 2009 who vividly remembered past South African president, Nelson Mandela passing away while he was incarcerated in the 1980s whereas he lived till the age of 95 (2013). Interestingly, Broome was not alone in this at all. A myriad of people remember vast details about this faux passing away of Nelson Mandela including a lot of media coverage and even a heartfelt speech by his widow.

Broome says that she believes the real reason behind the Mandela effect is that from the point of then to now, one allegedly drifted into a parallel universe with an alternate history and thus one’s memory doesn’t coincide with the reality that they currently inhabit. Of course, one can always dismiss the Mandela effect as a confabulation (“honest lying.” A person creates a false memory without intending to lie or deceive others). This makes sense since some examples of the Mandela effect are not quite believable due to corruption by misinformation and/or unreliable eyewitnesses however, when looking at more believable examples with hordes of people backing said information up, a feeling of uncanniness takes over as a hint of scepticism slowly drowns. Let’s explore two such examples:

Do you believe that the Monopoly mascot with the moustache wears a monocle? Literally everyone does but he does not wear a monocle and never has. After figuring this out, I randomly asked my friend whether or not the Monopoly mascot wears a monocle when she replied in the positive. I proceeded to look up the Monopoly mascot in front of her and she was frankly bewildered.

The example we’re going to explore now seemingly makes the previous examples look tame. Let’s look into thousands of people recounting a movie that never existed. This 90s movie titled “Shazaam” supposedly features stand-up comedian Sinbad who plays a genie. Sinbad however has spoken out various times about never being in such a movie when being pestered about this several times on Twitter. There was a similar sounding movie called Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal as a genie and Sinbad had a tendency to wear genie-esque outfits. People still insist on watching Shazaam in spite of that.

Conclusively, one should take into consideration that groups of people will occasionally develop the same or similar false memories as they share same or similar experiences. Whether or not this effect is mere misremembrance or actually involves parallel universes is subjective and will remain unsolved.