Folks Online Share 30 Examples Of The Mandela Effect That Were The Most Confusing To Them
Ever got caught recalling something that ended up being false, but you swore something was a thing, especially since everyone else seemed to validate this supposedly false memory?
Yep, you got duped by what is called the Mandela effect. It’s when a bunch of people believe something to be true, when it’s not.
One of the most famous ones, especially in the US, was The Berenstain Bears one, where people were sure it was Berenstein and not Berenstain. But there are many more of them.
Speaking of many more, Redditors have recently been listing the ones that messed with their minds the most. The thread managed to get almost 13,000 upvotes with a handful of Reddit awards, and generate over 8,400 comments.
We invite you to check out the best responses in a curated list below, and while you’re at it, upvote the ones that messed with your mind too, and leave a comment with some effects that you know.
More Info: Reddit
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The monopoly guy not having a monocle
He did wear a monocle, but only when Mr. Peanut would stay the night and forgot it in his rush to get to work in the morning.
I don't know if it counts, but I had a favorite orange t-shirt and I haven't seen it in years. Asked my mom if she knows anything about it and described the drawings on it. She went "You mean the turquoise one? It's in x drawer" I fought her a while about it and finally went to check the said drawer and there it was, my favorite "orange" shirt in all its turquoise glory
Orange is the negative colour of the turquoise. (Just think of the coloured films)
Fruit of the Loom cornucopia for sure. It's was there. I remember distinctly, and no other brand has that specific cornucopia. I could probably even draw it from memory if I needed to to
Pikachus tail having a black end
Pikachu doesn't have that
The one that always gets me is particular to my friends and I from when we were kids. There was a creek that ran under the street in the neighborhood and we would sometimes hang out in the banks on either side of the road. There was this big rock that we would sit on all the time. Except one day we were walking by and it wasn’t a rock. It was a small tree. Fully rooted in and established and the rock was no where to be seen. Mind you, it was an extremely heavy boulder. We passed that spot all the time and all of us remember that rock. We call it the shapeshifting rock.
The fact that shaggy doesn’t have a protruding Adam’s apple
This one is a bit more personal to me, but growing up my mom and I always made an effort to go to the beach every Friday afternoon.
When it got too dark to be in the water, we would make our way to the park that was right next to the beach.
On some Fridays, we would just chill on one of the slides and look at the stars. One day I saw this light spinning around and I remember asking my mom what it was.
She told me that it was a lighthouse, and that it's used at night to stop ships from crashing into the shore.
I remember this vividly because it was kind of like my gateway into hyperfixating on sunken and shipwrecked ships.
Years later, over a decade (so this was probably in the mid to late 2000s), I got back into lighthouses. I go online to see if this lighthouse that I saw was still in commission, and I can't find any traces of it.
So I ask my mom, and apparently this conversation we had never took place according to her. I insist, and finally she's like "idk babes, I probably forgot"
So I go looking deeper, and apparently there was never a lighthouse where I thought it was.
To this day it f**ks me up, because I KNOW what I saw, I KNOW what we talked about.
Did you ever visit other beaches that did have a lighthouse? Sometimes we can merge more than one memory together.
It’s spelled Febreze, not Febreeze
It's always been Febreze, but there is a product called "FleaBreeze" which is scented spray for dog beds.
Beats by Dr. Dre. I’m almost positive that it was “Beats by Dre.” But I went and found my old headphones and sure enough it says “Dr.” Its even weirder because it looks so wrong and crowded on the headband.
My friend TRULY believes to his core, that Jane Goodall passed away 15-20 years ago
My mom doesn’t have the best memory. I called her when I found out about this one and go, “Do you remember that movie when sinbad was a genie?” Without missing a beat she goes, “Yeah Shazam, right? You guys watched that all the time.” I said “you’re not confusing it with kazaam with shaq right?” She says “No you guys didn’t like that one as much you liked the sinbad one better.” She was mind blown that it doesn’t exist. I think she even looked through our vhs collection cause she’s was like we definitely have that movie but she never found it. Shame.
I really thought the Raisin Bran sun wore sunglasses. Nope.
For me it will ALWAYS be Berenstien bears. My mom and I felt like our whole lives were a lie when we looked back at the books one day and saw BerenSTAIN bears. The f**k?
i swear to f**king god mickey mouse had suspenders
I thought in some of the early movies he did, but I can't find a picture. What is clearly confusing the issue is that he has buttons on the front and rear of his pants for attaching suspenders (braces). I don't remember him ever wearing stockings (which is what we in the UK would hold up with suspenders!).
On Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album cover, there’s a red hat in his back pocket, not a bandana.
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” always thought it was Portrait
“Froot loops” became “fruit loops” then “froot loops” again
Britney Spears, 'Oops I Did it Again' she isn't wearing a headset. Toys and costumes with the red outfit always have a headset.
In the video you can clearly see her adjust a headset that doesn't exist.
Or in 'Baby One More Time' she was wearing a plaid skirt... I guess it's solid black??
People seem to combine and confuse live performance and official video footage.
Reddi Wip
i swear to god there was an H in the wip…
I remember SpongeBob holding a V shaped purple guitar now it's a peanut?
Tom Cruise dancing in Risky Business.
I'd have sworn he was wearing a white shirt and black Ray-Bans.
The "objects in mirror MAY BE closer than they appear" one still bugs me.
I always thought it was "objects in mirror ARE closer than they appear" 😵
Walkers crisps where the salt and vinegar were blue and cheese and onion were green. I vividly remember it and can't believe that it wasn't like that
They didn't. It was Golden Wonder that had the opposite colours.
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This is a case of people remembering something but not the full details. Golden Wonder used to be the market leader for crisps, then suffered a catastrophic failure and the then much smaller company Walkers overtook and completely dominated them. Walkers use the opposite colour scheme to Golden Wonder, so when Golden Wonder failed and Walkers replaced them as the market leader, it meant the colours you'd see in the supermarket or in newsagents changed. Because you were eating a different brand, not because one specific brand changed their own colours. People who think they remember eating Walkers with the opposite colour scheme are actually remembering eating Golden Wonder.
Walkers were always the exception. Every. Other. Crisp manufacturer has blue for salt & vinegar.
Nope. The only shift was in which company dominated the market.
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Nope, never did, always like that. Which brand dominated the market did change however.
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Just to shake it up though, Golden Wonder themselves claim that Walkers changed the colour!
It's even weirder when you consider nearly every other crisp make or even other snacks made by Walkers have the s & v as blue, the C & O as green.
Never heard of Walkers, but Lays S&V are blue and sour cream and onion are green. Maybe you're thinking of that.
They didn't, you're probably thinking of a different brand.
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Walkers was an independent company that had nothing to do with Lays, until they hit trouble so Lays purchased them. They retained the name Walkers for brand recognition.
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That when Agatha Christie disappeared mysteriously for several days, she was never seen again and presumed deceased.
Legit had an argument with a friend over this before i figured out what was going on
Stouffer’s stove top stuffing has apparently never existed.
How come no one is talking about the hiking emoji?? I vividly remember there was and hiking emoji where a guy/girl is climbing a rock with a stick on hand, seems like we never had one
Two of my most vivid childhood memories involve buildings that I now realise didn't exist and couldn't possibly have existed.
I have the same. I went to barcelona, spain, when I was a kid. We visited many places including the Sagrada Familia and a mountain with a small amusement park called Tibidabo. The next time I went I was shocked to see that the church was nowhere near that mountain. I still remember clearly it being there. Its funny how memories can shift.
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The only thing that this article proves is that human memory is total s**t. This is why eye witness testimony shouldn't be used in court.
I think that it should be used but taking it with a lot of skepticism.
Load More Replies... I remember owning a children's book that was about dragons and with each page they would talk about a dragon that had one extra head compared to the dragon before. The dragons also became increasingly dangerous. I loved that book, but it's nowhere to be found and my mom has no idea what I'm talking about.
I remember a dragon book too, but with different breeds [species?] in it? Like there was a green dragon, and theyre okay, kinda dangerous and pretty common, but oh no, stay away from Ice dragons and swamp/death/black dragons, because they have poisonous breath and will kill you flat. I even remember the grade i was in when i found it and the library it was in, but cant find it now
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The robber emoji. Never existed. I swear I remember it, the yellow man with the black mask, black hat, striped shirt, and bag of money
This just goes to show how our memories are not reliable. Different events can merge into one. We have a perception of us being older or younger. They did an experiment in the UK where they set up a TV presenter. An actor stole her bag whilst she was doing a piece to camera. He made sure she saw him. When she was later asked to describe him, the description did not fit the man. It raised some interesting questions.
Yeah I can never understand how people can identify others. Unless I know a person for some time or they are extraordinary I wont remember. Like maybe having a pink Mohawk but not brown normal hair
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Here’s a personal Mandela effect. I once watched Shrek when I was little and during the scene where the fairytale creatures are getting locked up, one of them was Puss In Boots from Shrek 2. I even remember my dad pointing it out to me when he was watching it with me
I vividly remember a toy truck I had when I was a little kid. It was blue and white plastic and had a cute little face painted on. I loved that little truck and carried it and my stuffed toys everywhere around my home. I can’t find it in any pictures and my mom swears I never had a toy truck.
I'm fascinated by the ones focused on spelling. Our brains were obviously forcing us to see/remember a more "correct" version (Stein for stain in Berenstain Bears, for exmaple, b/c we're familiar with -stein as a name). An H in whip/wip. etc.
I very rarely look at individual letters in a word. I look at the shape of the overall word, and the context that it is in, and just basically guess what it is. Something like Berenstein bears is something where I would have heard the word before reading it... so when I looked at it, I didn't need to look at the individual letters to know what it was.
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5 years ago, one would be considered nuts to even be discussing this. I remember. I was there…
I'm surprised Uncle Sam isn't on here. A LOT of people, including myself, remember Uncle Sam (the Norman Rockwell Painting / Poster primarily), having a white and red striped hat with the blue star band. There's no dang stripes! It's just white with the blue star band. I googled pictures of him a while ago when I first heard it, and almost all the clipart / fanart / costumes and whatnot had the stripes. Then, when googling it again later... no stripes! Or only very rarely.
Not Norman Rockwell. That was James Montgomery Flagg.
Load More Replies... Two I always get wrong although I know better: 1. “Well, here’s another NICE mess you’ve gotten me into!” (Confusing because Laurel & Hardy did a short titled Another Fine Mess). 2. “Let the wild rumpus START,” from Where the Wild Things Are. “Begin” just sounds better.
My own personal one was about some relations of mine. My maternal grandmother's family have a reunion each year and we rarely see them at other times. When I was growing up there were a pair of my second cousins that I was sure were twins. Years later, after not seeing them for ages, I was talking to my mum and was told they weren't twins just sisters. Blew my mind when I found out.
To be fair some siblings look like twins. I know a couple of women that are like 6y apart and when I met them in their 20s many tought that they were twins or at least the same age.
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Brittany always had a black skirt I know because I had a dupe as my first teen outfit
For ages I was convinced M in the phonetic alphabet was Michael instead of Mike. This is because in The A-Team movie, Liam Neesons’ inflection sounded like he said Michael while they’re in the helicopter xD
Liesl’s dress from Sound of Music. I could have sworn it was a light baby blue color, I remember liking it partially for the color, I watched the movie 4 or 5 times and always remembered it as blue, but then rewatched a clip of that scene and it was pink? And then watched the movie again and it was pink?? What?
Two of my most vivid childhood memories involve buildings that I now realise didn't exist and couldn't possibly have existed.
I have the same. I went to barcelona, spain, when I was a kid. We visited many places including the Sagrada Familia and a mountain with a small amusement park called Tibidabo. The next time I went I was shocked to see that the church was nowhere near that mountain. I still remember clearly it being there. Its funny how memories can shift.
Load More Replies... The only thing that this article proves is that human memory is total s**t. This is why eye witness testimony shouldn't be used in court.
I think that it should be used but taking it with a lot of skepticism.
Load More Replies... I remember owning a children's book that was about dragons and with each page they would talk about a dragon that had one extra head compared to the dragon before. The dragons also became increasingly dangerous. I loved that book, but it's nowhere to be found and my mom has no idea what I'm talking about.
I remember a dragon book too, but with different breeds [species?] in it? Like there was a green dragon, and theyre okay, kinda dangerous and pretty common, but oh no, stay away from Ice dragons and swamp/death/black dragons, because they have poisonous breath and will kill you flat. I even remember the grade i was in when i found it and the library it was in, but cant find it now
Load More Replies... The robber emoji. Never existed. I swear I remember it, the yellow man with the black mask, black hat, striped shirt, and bag of money
This just goes to show how our memories are not reliable. Different events can merge into one. We have a perception of us being older or younger. They did an experiment in the UK where they set up a TV presenter. An actor stole her bag whilst she was doing a piece to camera. He made sure she saw him. When she was later asked to describe him, the description did not fit the man. It raised some interesting questions.
Yeah I can never understand how people can identify others. Unless I know a person for some time or they are extraordinary I wont remember. Like maybe having a pink Mohawk but not brown normal hair
Load More Replies... Here’s a personal Mandela effect. I once watched Shrek when I was little and during the scene where the fairytale creatures are getting locked up, one of them was Puss In Boots from Shrek 2. I even remember my dad pointing it out to me when he was watching it with me
I vividly remember a toy truck I had when I was a little kid. It was blue and white plastic and had a cute little face painted on. I loved that little truck and carried it and my stuffed toys everywhere around my home. I can’t find it in any pictures and my mom swears I never had a toy truck.
I'm fascinated by the ones focused on spelling. Our brains were obviously forcing us to see/remember a more "correct" version (Stein for stain in Berenstain Bears, for exmaple, b/c we're familiar with -stein as a name). An H in whip/wip. etc.
I very rarely look at individual letters in a word. I look at the shape of the overall word, and the context that it is in, and just basically guess what it is. Something like Berenstein bears is something where I would have heard the word before reading it... so when I looked at it, I didn't need to look at the individual letters to know what it was.
Load More Replies... 5 years ago, one would be considered nuts to even be discussing this. I remember. I was there…
I'm surprised Uncle Sam isn't on here. A LOT of people, including myself, remember Uncle Sam (the Norman Rockwell Painting / Poster primarily), having a white and red striped hat with the blue star band. There's no dang stripes! It's just white with the blue star band. I googled pictures of him a while ago when I first heard it, and almost all the clipart / fanart / costumes and whatnot had the stripes. Then, when googling it again later... no stripes! Or only very rarely.
Not Norman Rockwell. That was James Montgomery Flagg.
Load More Replies... Two I always get wrong although I know better: 1. “Well, here’s another NICE mess you’ve gotten me into!” (Confusing because Laurel & Hardy did a short titled Another Fine Mess). 2. “Let the wild rumpus START,” from Where the Wild Things Are. “Begin” just sounds better.
My own personal one was about some relations of mine. My maternal grandmother's family have a reunion each year and we rarely see them at other times. When I was growing up there were a pair of my second cousins that I was sure were twins. Years later, after not seeing them for ages, I was talking to my mum and was told they weren't twins just sisters. Blew my mind when I found out.
To be fair some siblings look like twins. I know a couple of women that are like 6y apart and when I met them in their 20s many tought that they were twins or at least the same age.
Load More Replies... Brittany always had a black skirt I know because I had a dupe as my first teen outfit
For ages I was convinced M in the phonetic alphabet was Michael instead of Mike. This is because in The A-Team movie, Liam Neesons’ inflection sounded like he said Michael while they’re in the helicopter xD
Liesl’s dress from Sound of Music. I could have sworn it was a light baby blue color, I remember liking it partially for the color, I watched the movie 4 or 5 times and always remembered it as blue, but then rewatched a clip of that scene and it was pink? And then watched the movie again and it was pink?? What?
