See title. For those who don’t know, the Mandela Effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. It’s named after Nelson Mandela because a significant number of people remembered him dying in prison in the 1980s, even though he actually passed away in 2013.

I’m curious to hear about your personal experiences with this phenomenon. Have you ever remembered an event, fact, or detail that turned out to be different from reality? What was it and how did you react when you found out your memory didn’t align with the facts? Does it happen often?

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The Berenstein Bears one and the Fruit of the Loom not having a horn are the ones that have me questioning reality and my childhood.

    • hactar42@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      There is a theory that the Fruit of the Loom one is actually a viral marketing thing. Like the company scrubbed it on purpose and is playing into it to build brand recognition.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Somehow I had always thought it was Klu Klux Klan instead of Ku Klux Klan. I’m not sure where I got that or if anyone else thought the same thing though.

  • xia@links.hackliberty.org
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    9 months ago

    I get the “feeling” of a mandela effect far more frequently than i can solidly know for sure. I guess my first experience was decades ago as a child. I recall staring at a Bernstein bears book, and being oddly transfixed by tye fact that the spelling of the title did not match that of the authors name, literally inches apart on the same page. Later i experienced a schrodenbug or two (which i think is the same phenomenon), and one really solid social ME were a church ceased to exist (or got merged into a neighboring church). After the first few, now I fully admit I am WAY too quick to believe odd circumstance is a ME, and usually find myself reluctantly disproving that to myself with notebook/journal entries… only to later wonder how they might change too.

    • RampageDon@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Ghost types are only weak to psychic in that game because they are poison types too. Ruined me for generations swearing psychic was super to ghost.

    • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’ve never heard that before and find it baffling.

      Bulbasaur comes out of the gate with two types.

      Charmander becomes Charizard with two types.

      The first (or second) non-starter you encounter is Pidgy with two types.

      The required Viridian Forest had Weedle with two types and if you only got a Caterpie, that becomes Butterfree who also has two types.

      The number of two type Pokemon that you can catch at the start of the game is massive. Probably about half?

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Heh yup! That’s part of the effect, a whole generation potentially conflated Shaq’s movie with a movie that was never made. Scroll down the link I posted, they mention it. So bizarre.

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Lol I got into a pretty heated argument with a group of friends, half of whom definitely remembered the movie and even started recounting some of the plot. The other half had no idea what the hell we were talking about.

          • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Oh I definitely remember seeing the movie. I even remember the VHS dust jacket on the shelves of Blockbuster. But who the hell knows lol

            • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              Dude yes!!! I remember that same jacket! Thanks for preserving my sanity for another day Bertram, hero.

  • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I could’ve sworn Jim Beam whiskey was Jim Bean. A friend of mine had a poster of a whiskey bottle on his wall that I stared at every time I was there. He was a minor at the time and didn’t drink, so I always wondered why he had it up. Years later I saw a Jim Beam bottle and had a Mandela moment. The Berenstein Bears and Mandela dying in jail were things I believed, too, but I think the whiskey one is one I haven’t heard from anybody else, yet.

    • vladmech@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I had to go look it up to double check you weren’t trying to pull a fast one; I was 100% sure it was Bean.

  • nycki@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I had some Berenstain Bears books as a kid and I remember noting at the time “huh, weird name but okay”. So like, I don’t get why people think it was “Berenstein”? It looks wrong, but it’s always looked wrong.

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I genuinely remembered there were 5 main characters in the Little Einsteins cast, even though there were only 4.

    I guess I was imagining random weirdness.

  • TheDarkestShark@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Here’s one I just experienced, was watching Star Wars: A New Hope and my brother asked me if I remember C-3PO every having a silver leg. I told him no, hes always been all gold. Next scene we watched his right leg from the knee down was all silver. Like wtf never have I noticed that before, I said meh maybe it was a Lucas later edit. Revenge of the Sith comes on the TV next and C-3PO’s leg is so vibrantly silver that I could not even comprehend not noticing that contrast in past viewings.