Your Mandela Effect moment

[StockpotSoup]

I posted about mine on here a while back… it was about two celebrities that I distinctly remembered were supposed to have dated, but there’s literally nothing about in online, and no one here remembered either (and even found proof that one half of the supposed couple was married to someone else at the time!)

Have you had a Mandela Effect moment? And, when you realised you’d misremembered something, how did you react? My instinct was to look for logic explanations (e.g. I’d misunderstood a denial of a rumoured relationship). However, when I look at these things online, I’m amazed by how many people will accept literally any other explanation than “I was wrong”.

One that particularly fascinates me is around a film called Shazam. Countless people claim they can remember it, that they used to watch it all the time when they were kids… yet it doesn’t exist. When you read into it, it actually becomes quite obvious how it happened: there was a film called Kazaam that came out around the same time with the exact plot they describe, and Sinbad - the actor/comedian they believe starred as a genie in Shazam - starred in a series of TV ads as a genie around the same time. Yet thousands utterly refuse to believe that there’s no such film.

Anyone got any good examples?

For some reason I was convinced John Denver had died in the year 1981. He actually died in 1997. It's doubly weird because I was quite a fan of his in the late 1980s - while he was apparently still alive - but I'm sure I remember him being already dead then; and I have no memory of his death in 1997.

The kids 80s tv show Dungeons and Dragons. I have a very specific memory of an episode where the kids (who were sent through a portal to another world whilst on a fairground ride) somehow got home. They later discover that another set of kids go on the same ride and disappear through the portal. The original group decide the second group will never survive in the other world and go back to help them. They end up sending the second group of kids back but get stuck there after the portal closes forever.

Given every episode was about the kids trying to get home, this was especially traumatic to eight year old me. Me and my brother went to school the next day and all the kids were talking about it.

As an adult, one night I was talking to DH about it and he didn’t remember that episode. We went down a rabbit hole looking for it and ended up reading descriptions of every single episode ever made and couldn’t find it 🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought he did as well! It was a whole part of the reason that the boy in Final Destination starts feeling uneasy before the flight - he hears John Denver playing when he’s in the airport toilets 😟

There is a script for a final episode that was never made and the children are given the option to return to earth but choose not to. Venger is revealed as Dungeon Master's son who is under a curse - they manage to lift the curse so he becomes a good guy again.

Oh wow! Do they stay because everything is hunky dory now Venger is nice?

I thought he did as well! It was a whole part of the reason that the boy in Final Destination starts feeling uneasy before the flight - he hears John Denver playing when he’s in the airport toilets 😟

But that still works surely because John Denver died in 1997 and Final Destination was released in 2000.

No, they stay because there is still so much evil in the realm to be tackled! 😃

Nope, cheese and onion hasn't always been blue. I know it was because like you I'd pick up cheese and onion instead of salt and vinegar and be annoyed because I don't like c&o. That's just gaslighting us over crisp flavours 😡.

Ha, oh - ignore me then. My Mandela memory thought the film came out around ‘97.

Theres several things I've misremembered over time.
I was convinced my sister had grommets as a child. It happened to come up in conversation and both she and my mum said no. Apparently she had glue ear and was going to have them but for some reason didn't.
A few years back my sister lost her sight. I remember her telling me in the months leading up to it that she had several instances of losing her vision for a few minutes.

Apparently no. I had that wrong too.

Memory is so unreliable and so easy to trick and so selective.

Didn’t I read somewhere it was a different company that had the reversed colours? Not sure.

When you Google it, it says that there was never a change and cheese and onion has always been blue...

Walkers began to dominate the market over Smiths, Golden Wonder and other brands that used green for cheese and onion hence why people think their crisps changed colour but they never have changed colour

Really wish they’d made that episode. I even wrote to the creators asking them if they’d made the episode I thought was real.

That explains it. I was trying to remember the name of Smiths who were big before Walkers.

Apols to Walkers for the gaslighting accusation, in that case. It was still vvv annoying to pick up c&o when I wanted s&v, though.

The crisps thing is insane.

Why on earth would the actual manufacturers deny a change? Walkers have said categorically that they have never changed those packet colours.

What possible reason could Walkers have for lying? That is a ludicrous position to take imo. The people who made the crisps have decided to lie to the world.

And that would be because... ?

There are people who actually argue with Walkers about it! Fucking nuts.

The walkers one is easily explained; the market leading brand in the UK changed at some point from Smith's and golden wonder (both of which have the green S&V) to walkers, who have always had blue. The memory is "that main brand of crisps" and your brain fills in oh yes, walkers of course. That's how memory works, we're sort of rebuilding it from a set of data points and then we fill in the blanks. Otherwise every memory would take up a huge amount more space and we wouldn't be able to remember as much.

I remember picking the wrong ones too as a child but it's probably because it was from before I could read.

There is a fan made version on YouTube but not identical to the script:

I wonder if the DnD memory is based on something like there was an unrelated programme like are you afraid of the dark, that deliberately picked a similar sort of storyline to pick up on the popularity of DnD but they gave it that storyline which was different to anything that happened in the real programme.

See I remember that they were all in their nightclothes. And because of that I became concerned and the suitability of any nightwear I had to stand up to the rigours of Dungeons and Dragons.

I remember this aswell, I've also seen walkers say they never swapped the colours

But I'm 99% sure I remember them changing!

Right, what happened is this.

Golden Wonder used to be the market leaders and the default crisps in most corner shops. They had blue for salt and vinegar and green for cheese and onion. Then Walkers came along and took over as the market leader and default.

If you were a small child then you knew that you liked the crisps in the green packets but one day your favourite flavour comes in a blue packet. As you are young you can’t read the description or notice the make. All you know is that the crisps that used to be in a green packet are now in a blue packet.

That's what really makes me laugh about the idiots who genuinely believe they are flipping through universes

Crisp packets used to be a different colour.
The company says no?
There were different, more popular brands with the colours I remember? At some point walkers became more popular and their colours were different? You say I'm mixing up different brands' colours from 40 years ago? No, that's just crazy. I must be moving between universes! 🤦

So you believe your own "memory" over the actual facts of the situation? Do you think it's a some kind of conspiracy to hoodwink the world about crisps? What would be the reaaon for that?

Quite a long time ago I thought that something with multiple possible outcomes had happened and I knew the result, think like knowing who won the Grand National, and at the time I used to bet quite a bit on sports events and could have won quite a bit of money expect I didn't know that it actually hadn't happened yet and was very surprised when the result was announced and I realized.

Not quite the same as a Mandela effect but an example of how the mind can play tricks on you

Those of us who were a bit older when Walkers became more popular remember having to be careful to check the brand when picking up a packet of crisps.