Let’s do a little experiment. Picture the Monopoly Man in your head right now. Who, by the
way, goes by Mr. Monopoly, incidentally, and canonically is ACTUALLY named Rich Uncle
Pennybags. What kind of middle name is Uncle, that’s beside the point. What does Mr. Monopoly
look like? Maybe something like… this?
Well, if this is the Mr. Monopoly you are picturing, I’m sorry to say, you have fallen
victim to the Mandela Effect, and you're not alone. The Monopoly mascot has never, not
once, been featured with a monocle. Fairly simple mistake to make, but how is it possible that
so many people have experienced this very specific memory mixup?
According to associate professor of cognitive psychology Dr. Gene Brewer, it’s a matter
of memory reconstruction. As Brewer told Mental Floss in 2019, “When you recall an event,
you use memories around it, taking elements or pieces of other events and fitting them
where they make sense." For Mr. Monopoly, it’s believed that many people are conflating
his appearance with that of Mr. Peanut, another prevalent fancy-man mascot from around the
same time period, who dons a top hat, a cane, and a monocle.
Hi, I’m Justin Dodd, and welcome to a special bonus episode of The List Show, from my living room.
Let’s see what other memories we can rewrite.
So, where does the name Mandela Effect come from? A little over a decade ago, blogger
and paranormal researcher Fiona Broome coined the term in reference to one false shared
memory in particular: the death of Nelson Mandela. Before you start to question your
sanity, yes, the famous anti-apartheid leader DID pass away—that part is true. But the
how and the when is apparently not something we all agree on. It turns out that many people
have a memory of him dying while imprisoned sometime in the 1980s. This is… odd, because
Nelson Mandela died in 2013, as a free man. In response to this bizarre, apparently widespread
phenomenon, a whole slew of other instances of the Mandela Effect were revealed.
How about the famous peanut butter brand, Jiffy? A classic—you can probably still
see it in grocery stores today and picture that famous label, complete with the Y at
the end. Well, unfortunately, there is no Jiffy. There is Jif, which is what you’re
probably thinking of, but why do so many of us think it’s called Jiffy?
Dr. Brewer, once again, points to confused memory reconstruction. Skippy peanut butter
is probably directly adjacent to Jif when you’re reaching for it at Publix. Jif and
Skippy somehow become Jiffy. This phenomenon isn’t unique to peanut butter brands—it’s
even been observed in experimental settings. According to Brewer, “In studies, when you
show participants word pairs and ask them to remember ‘blackmail’ and ‘jailbird,’
half of them will later say they remember learning the word blackbird.”
Let’s do another experiment. Right now, do your best impression of Hannibal Lecter
from The Silence of the Lambs. Go ahead, if you have a cat or a dog feel free to deliver
it to them, they can be your Jodie Foster. OK, very creepy, good job everybody.
If you said “Hello, Clarice,” guess what, you just got Mandela’d. This is probably
the most quoted line from that film (although Buffalo Bill’s lotion line might be a close
second). But Anthony Hopkins never says these words in The Silence of the Lambs. In the
scene you’re probably remembering, where he and Jodie Foster’s character first meet,
Hannibal says
“good morning.”
It’s not even close. And yet, many people can hear the terrifying Hannibal Lecter saying
it in a very specific melodic tone in their heads.
This is not far from the Darth Vader Mandela Effect, which involves one of the most famous
movie quotes of all time. If your memory of the big reveal in The Empire Strikes Back
involves Darth Vader saying the words “Luke, I am your father,” you should probably go
back and watch that scene again.
If you were a child at all during the 20th century, you probably remember the Berenstein
Bears. Lovely series of books about a family of bears. There are literally hundreds of
books, hundreds of covers that all feature the name, Berenstein. Or… did they?
The name is actually Berenstain Bears. Yep, Stain. Not Stein, A one-letter difference,
sure, but one that people have a very hard time accepting. Of all the instances of the
Mandela effect we’ve looked into, this is one of the most disputed ones, with people
truly believing that they used to be called Berenstein, and someone has taken painstaking
lengths to rewrite history. I’m no expert on alternate realities, but I think maybe
we all just got it wrong. It seems more likely that the suffix “Stein” or "Stein" is just more common,
Einstein, Frankenstein, that our brains read that cursive A as an E to make it easier.
Which one of these is the real Fruit of the Loom logo—this one, or this one? Despite
what you might remember, there has never been a cornucopia in their branding. It’s always
a loose pile of fruit, which personally would not have been my top choice for a brand that
sells boxer briefs, but that’s neither here nor there.. And yet, many people picture something
resembling this image, which I made in two minutes in photoshop, instead.
This is potentially due to your brain trying to make sense of a memory. You know there
is a pile of fruit involved, and then you think, how is fruit often portrayed? Maybe
a cornucopia. Memory reconstruction: it’s not foolproof.
Risky Business is not regarded as one of the most impactful films of all time. In fact,
I don’t remember anyone talking about any scene from that movie, except for one in particular.
Tom Cruise slides into the room, wearing nothing but shades, an unbuttoned shirt, underwear,
and some socks. He proceeds to lipsync to Old Time Rock n Roll while dancing around
the room, and cinema history is made. I’ve seen countless people dress up as Tom Cruise's character from this scene
for Halloween, college parties, you name it. It’s always the same outfit, but everyone
gets it wrong. Tom Cruise is not wearing sunglasses in that scene.
Where does this prevalent mis-memory come from? Well, Tom Cruise does wear the iconic
Ray Ban sunglasses in other scenes, and he is featured wearing them in some promotional
material for the film. But in that scene, his eyes are naked. Brewer attributes this
to the sheer amount of information in a film. Your brain can’t memorize the whole thing.
As he says, “When you go back to recreate it, you’ll get interference from other things
that happened in the movie.”
We’ve spent a lot of this episode discussing modern instances of the Mandela Effect. Modern
films, mascots, quotes. This makes sense, because any collective error would probably
be corrected over time for something as classic as, say, the Mona Lisa, right? Well, guess
again.
One prevalent example of the Mandela Effect is apparently the presence (or, lack thereof)
of Mona Lisa’s smile. Many people claim that Mona Lisa was frowning, or at the very
least, not sporting a smile of any kind. The fact that she is, undoubtedly, smirking in
the famous portrait comes as quite a shock to those who misremember. While I scoured
the internet for Team Frowners, I even saw some believers claim that the images of Mona
Lisa available on the internet have all been Photoshopped, giving her this fake, modern
smile. This, they claim, is the true evidence of multiple realities. The most famous painting
of all time... but with two different faces.
Dr. Margaret Livingstone,
a Harvard neuroscientist, points to another explanation. Our perception of Mona Lisa’s
smile changes based on where our eyes focus when looking at her. Long story short, our
peripheral vision is pretty bad at deciphering fine details, so if you’re focusing on her
mouth, or her eyes, or her forehead, you will interpret her mood in three different ways.
Luis Martinez Otero, a researcher at the Institue of Neuroscience puts it like this:
Different cells in the retina transmit different categories of information or “channels”
to the brain. "Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes
others take over and you don’t see the smile.”
And finally, one of the most bizarre examples of the Mandela Effect: an entire feature film
that people remember fondly, despite the fact that it never existed. I am, of course, talking
about Shazaam, a film from the ‘90s starring the comedian Sinbad as a genie. While this
might sound like an impossibly specific movie for multiple people to fabricate, there is
an obvious jumping-off point. There was a film in 1996 called Kazaam, starring Shaquille
O’Neal as a genie, which is obviously what people are remembering, but how is it that
so many people remember it specifically being another actor with a different title?
Some sources point to the fact that Sinbad had a couple successful comedies in the 90s
around the time of Kazaam’s release. And, more specifically, on the VHS copy of Sinbad’s
film First Kid, there is a trailer for Kazaam. Combine that with the existence of a Marvel
comic book superhero named Shazam and the fact that Sinbad looks like a man who knows
his way around a pair of genie pants [pic of Sinbad in parachute pants] and you've got
a recipe for misapprehension. This bizarre film conflation is so prevalent, that even
Dr. Brewer, our resident Mandela Effect explainer, admited to “remembering” this fictional film.
Should these processes that lead to false memories be considered flaws? Not exactly.
Current theories in psychology are exploring the idea that our ability to cull details
from past experiences to create theoretical concepts is actually part of a survival mechanism.
Brewer told us that “Taking episodes from our past allows us to construct possible futures
and anticipate those events. It makes us adaptive to new environments.” Like... living in
a world without Jiffy peanut butter.
If you’ve ever experienced the Mandela Effect, or if there’s one we didn’t mention, let
us know in the comments. Make sure to subscribe to Mental Floss so you can catch more videos
like this every week. Thanks for watching.