The Mandela Effect Explained

Hi friends! Recently, I made an Instagram poll (IG: asheycakes) asking you all what you'd like to see next on my YouTube channel, and most people voted for a video about the Mandela Effect, so here we are (you get a vid and a blog). Please enjoy!

HERE IS MY YT VIDEO!

I gotta say, from my undergrad psychology days, I will never ever forget the hippocampus. We had a lecturer who would say, "If you want to remember something, remember something with it," and he would be like, "the hippocampus looks like a seahorse," and that is ingrained in my brain forever. The hippocampus is where we store our memories, so that's why that's important here (it turns short-term memories into long-term ones). I actually think it was named after a seahorse, so that's probably why the lecturer said that, hahah, the more you know!

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The Mandela Effect Explained

First, what even is the Mandela Effect? I'm sure many of you have heard of it and seen some examples; those examples can be quite impressive! French (2018) says that the Mandela Effect "refers to a new and unusually technophilic conspiracy theory that concerns the collective memory of the populace and the data storage of history." In simple terms, it's a situation where a large mass of people ALL believe something, such as an event that occurred, but in reality, it didn't occur at all.

Allegedly, the theory originated in 2009 with Fiona Broome, who discovered that she and many others believed Nelson Mandela had passed away in the 1980s, not in 2013 (i.e., a collective false memory that he passed away in prison, hence the term "Mandela Effect"). Some even went so far as to suggest this could be evidence of parallel realities, meaning that within each universe, alternative versions of events/things exist (Dagnall and Drinkwater, 2018). Some people are very on board with the Mandela effect and the theory being intertwined with parallel/alternate realities, and some believe it's pseudoscience, and others like to debunk it by explaining how collective false memories work (but we'll get to that soon).

Fiona Broome was a paranormal blogger who created the website "Alternate Memories/Alternate Realities," with the domain https://mandelaeffect.com, which I can't seem to find existing today, and I believe it's been excluded from the Wayback Machine. Every time I try to type something in that could have been Broome's website, it comes up with nothing or says "this has been excluded" - maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I think I was searching correctly. That is why I have put allegedly - but she is cited in many academic articles as being the first person to coin the term the Mandela Effect. I've also found a few Reddit threads that claim she was a bit of a fraud, see "here" and "here". The only thing that I can find is this WordPress site "here" but I don't think it has all the original stuff, and it's not a paid domain. From the looks of it, it's likely that Broome made the OG site VERY private and somehow had it removed from the Wayback Machine due to internet trolls.

What are some common examples of the Mandela Effect?

• People remembering the cartoon "Looney Toons" as "Looney Tunes" (the latter is correct)

• "The Berenstain Bears" is often mistaken as "The Berenstein Bears"

• People remember the Monopoly man as having a monocle, but he doesn't at all

• People remember the Pokémon character Pikachu as having black on his tail, but there's no black whatsoever.

• Heh, this is one I talked about over on my "eatswithash" blog, where the monkey from Curious George doesn't have a tail, but many remember him with a tail.

• The Star Wars line - people remember "Luke, I am your father," but it's actually "No, I am your father"

• The line in Snow White where the witch says "Mirror Mirror on the wall," is actually "Magic Mirror on the wall"

• Many people think there is a movie called Shazaam from the 1990s, but no such movie ever existed. One explanation for this one is that people are misremembering another film from that time, such as Kazaam.

• The fruit of the loom logo - with many people remembering it as having a cornucopia (this has caused A LOT of controversy on TikTok)

• The film and novel "Interview with the Vampire" is often mistaken as "Interview with a Vampire"

• The line from Forrest Gump is often remembered wrong as "Life is like a box of chocolates," but it's actually "Life was like a box of chocolates" - this one definitely gets me

So, how can we explain this? Well, from a sociological/psychological perspective, we have to look at collective false memories, but there are some other theories we will take a look at here too.

False memories

According to Wikipedia, "a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not actually happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformation, and source misattribution have been suggested to be several mechanisms underlying a variety of false memory." One example of a collective false memory comes from a 2019 study that examined people who were familiar with the Bologna Centrale railway station's clock (in Italy). The clock was damaged in a b**bing in 1980. In this study, 92% of the respondents falsely remembered that the clock had remained stopped since then. However, the clock was repaired relatively soon after this incident occurred.

As we know, memories can be hazy and unreliable. In an article by Cuncic (2024), in Very Well Mind, she uses the example of Alexander Hamilton to help explain why memories can be unreliable. Many school kids learn that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the United States of America, but not a president. However, when people were asked about the presidents of the USA, many believed that Hamilton was, in fact, a president. Why is this? Well, we must consider this from a neuroscientific point of view; a memory of Hamilton is likely encoded in the brain in the same place where memories of presidents are. Therefore, when people try to think of the presidents of the USA, the neurons fire off, and people think of Hamilton. French (2018) describes memory as follows:

"While to the average person memory is a linear progression of sequential events constituting the present reality, modern-day historians as well as psychologists and brain researchers have argued that history and memories about history are constructions shaping collective reality. Memories can be penetrated, invaded, altered, and ordered in such a way as to match prescribed paradigms. Current research reveals that memories and histories — in consequence, belief — are not static, fixed, or linear, but rather processes which are constructive, malleable, and changeable: in a word, plastic."

There is a way to study false memories called the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, which demonstrates that learning a list of words that contain closely related items, e.g., "pillow" and "bed", can produce false recognition of related but non-presented words like "sleep". This means that a participant may be given a list of words such as "pillow", "bed", "dream", "wake" and asked to remember the list BUT when they remember the list, they also state associated words like "sleep" that weren't in the list at all. This word is known as a "lure," and after the experiment, participants were asked about it, and many were sure that they had heard the word, thus creating a false memory.

There are also so many other explanations for false memories, but in regards to the Mandela effect, it is suggested that false memories like these are shaped by similar cognitive factors that affect many people. These are social and cognitive reinforcement of incorrect memories and/or false news reports/misleading photos, and in turn, this stuff influences the memories based on them. It feels weird not to trust our own brain, right? Basically, the information we are privy to, whether it's via traditional media, word of mouth, the internet, or just suggestibility, may mean that we all create similar collective false memories. I think suggestibility is important because we could hear someone say, "Oh, I remember X this way," and then our brains kinda go, "Oh yeah, me too," even if we didn't.

Confabulation

Confabulation is such a fun word to say! Confabulation may be another way to explain why Mandela Effects occur. According to Wikipedia, confabulation 'is a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage". Confabulation is distinguished from lying as the person experiencing it has no desire to deceive someone, and they are unaware that the information is false. In simpler terms, it's your brain's way of filling in gaps that are missing in your memories to help make sense of them. Even though it's often associated with brain damage, it can happen to the everyday individual and often increases with age. It can also be provoked.

Confabulations/false memories can also be explained by things like "source monitoring errors," where people are unable to distinguish between a real and a fake (false) memory. One notable example of this is the "lost in the mall" study, which Professor of Psychology Jim Coan carried out. Coan gave his family members short narratives about childhood events that were completely made up. He created a scenario where his brother got lost in a mall as a child. This is something that never happened. However, his brother believed that the event did in fact occur, and he added additional information to this made-up scenario. Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus applied this technique to a much larger sample size, and she found that at least 25% of people were unable to recognise that the event was untrue. This technique demonstrates that confabulations can be created through suggestibility, especially if the suggestibility is coming from someone you trust. I must also point out here that the lost in the mall technique is criticised as it is not generalisable to the memory of traumatic events.

Misleading Post-Event Information / Misinformation

If you learn something new after going to an event, this information may alter your memory of such an event. This can occur with things like "leading questions" in investigations, and may be one reason why we cannot rely on eyewitness testimonies.

Sometimes people mistakenly use leading questions when interviewing an eyewitness. For example, there may have been a car crash, and the police officer asked witness A, "Did you see the car crash into the tree?" This is a leading question because it suggests that the car did crash into the tree, so witness A may assume that it did and say yes, I saw it. A better question to ask in this situation may be, "Did you see anything happen near the tree?" Therefore, there's no leading question and we aren't likely to change our memory of what we saw. In relation to the Mandela Effect, this ties into suggestibility (again), misinformation, and confirmation bias.

The Internet Impact

I find it very interesting how much the internet plays a role in the rise of theories like the Mandela Effect and also burnt toast theory, the dead internet theory, and so on. If we didn't have the Internet, it probably wouldn't have grown in popularity as fast as it did. And I'd be out of a job haha anyways! The Internet is a space that allows for potential falsehoods and misconceptions, rumours, conspiracy theories, etc., to gain traction. People then create communities based on such theories, and in turn, something imagined might seem factual. One longitudinal 10-year study that looked at over 100,000 news stories discussed on Twitter highlighted how rumours and hoaxes won over the truth by about 70% (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2022). Recalling something multiple times can enhance your confidence in your memory, even if it becomes somewhat unclear over time. When more people are provided with incorrect information about something, these details can be absorbed into others' memories as facts and subsequently reinforced.

Alternative Realities / Parallel Universes

As Sam Pang would say, "I'm not gonna lie", discussing and critically thinking about alternative realities is quite scary. And it does make my brain hurt a lot when I try to understand it, so I will do my best here. Alternative realities is a theory that comes from quantum physics (I haven't done physics since year 11 LOL). Alternative realities "relates to the idea that rather than one timeline of events, alternate realities or universes taking place and mixing with our timeline." This would result in collective groups of people who end up having the same memories because the timeline gets altered as we shift between realities.

It is something that many describe as unreal, but we are unable to disprove that there are no other universes or alternative realities out there. And may be a reason why the Mandala Effect is so popular, even today. However, we cannot prove that alternative realities/parallel universes can exist either.

I also want to point out here that there are claims that people think the Large Hadron Collider is connected to the Mandela Effect and potential time travel. If you're unfamiliar with the Large Hadron Collider, it is the world's largest particle accelerator built by CERN between 1998 and 2008. It is used to investigate aspects of particle physics. I don't think I'd do any justice by attempting to explain it more, so you can read what it does in further detail "here". Anyway, there is a theory (probably a conspiracy theory) that the Large Hadron Collider opened a portal to a completely different dimension when it was activated in 2008 (the year before the Mandela Effect really took off). However, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this. Sidenote - I feel like this would make a great sci-fi show!

I think that we have to really stay with Occam's Razor with the Mandela Effect and that it's mostly just a bunch of collective false memories occurring, and people are having a lot of fun with it! Sidenote - there are also studies were people learn about characters like Pikachu or Curious George for the first time and see that Pikachu has no black on his tail and that Curious George doesn't have a tail but when they're asked to recall the character by drawing it, they draw the characters as with a black tail or with a tail. I wonder what this suggests about collective consciousness.

One Mandela Effect that really got me was the line from the Titanic. I always thought that Rose said "Paint me like one of your French girls," BUT it's actually "Draw me like one of your French girls," which makes sense because he's using pencils, not paints! I feel very dumb for that one.

My Thoughts!

Yes, I also have thoughts on this. I definitely have experienced false memories like these, as I mentioned above, the Titanic one, and I remembered the Forrest Gump line wrong too. BUT I want to dive a bit deeper because many Mandela Effects look at logos for food products, clothing, etc., and it's interesting because in advertising, logos change - it's important. I think BEFORE we claim that we remember a logo being a certain way, "before" we should take a look at the history on the company's website about how such a logo has changed over time. Especially Fruit of the Loom because the early developments of the logo ACTUALLY did have the cornucopia and I think they're just gaslighting everyone now LOL.

It's also possible that when we do remember things wrong, as a society, we might end up making something that turns into that "false" thing. I've heard people discuss the Mandela Effect as "proof" that we live in a simulation (simulation theory). The simulation theory/hypothesis posits that we live in a simulated reality, like something being controlled by some sort of higher being, a computer, or some sort of AI. It would basically mean that we were all like characters in a video game like The Sims. Or, it could be more like a Truman Show situation BUT anyway if we did live in a simulated reality, Mandela Effects could be seen as evidence of reality "glitches" (glitches in the matrix) or update's in code, which could lead to a change in past events and the collective memory. However, it doesn't explain why not everyone falls victim to a Mandela Effect. If we were living in a simulation, wouldn't ALL of us remember things wrong? I don't know but it's definitely mind boggling to think about.

TikTok Examples

Here are some TikTok examples of Mandela Effects

• Crazy Mandela Effects from TikTok user itsmattw_01

• 14 Mandela Effects from TikTok user jhon.time

• The Bucket List from TikTok user sam_d0ll

• Bob the Builder from TikTok user ashley.entangled (I don't get this one, that's how I remembered Bob, having a British accent because he was like Postman Pat). I also HATE Claymation, it freaks me out LOL.

• Michaelango's Statue of David from TikTok user sarahtheseven

  
  

Thanks for reading! Comment down below you're favourite Mandela Effect

Ash x

See below for references/readings/articles!

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References

• Bhattacharjee, D. (2021). Mandela effect & Déjà vu: Are we living in a simulated reality?. Authorea Preprints.

• Bhattacharjee, D. The Mandela effect, Déjà vu and possible interactions with the parallel world.

• Deckker, D., & Sumanasekara, S. (2025). Are We Living in a Simulation? A Deep Dive into the Simulation Hypothesis.

• De Vito, S., Cubelli, R., & Della Sala, S. (2009). Collective representations elicit widespread individual false memories. cortex, 45(5), 686-687.

• French, A. (2018). The mandela effect and new memory. Correspondences, 6(2).

• Jou, J., & Flores, S. (2013). How are false memories distinguishable from true memories in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm? A review of the findings. Psychological research, 77, 671-686.

• Lobaito, C. S. (2024). Phenomenon of False Memory: Emotional Dynamics of Memory Recall and the Mandela Effect (Doctoral dissertation, Grand Canyon University).

• Prasad, D., & Bainbridge, W. A. (2022). The Visual Mandela Effect as evidence for shared and specific false memories across people. Psychological Science, 33(12), 1971-1988.

• Seland, D. (2023). The Mandela Effect. Quality, 62(9), 6-6.

• Shanton, K., & Goldman, A. (2010). Simulation theory. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(4), 527-538.

• Spaulding, S. (2016). Simulation theory. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination (pp. 262-273). Routledge.

• Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2022). The spread of true and false news online, 2018. URL: https://ide. mit. edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2017-IDE-Research-Brief-False-News. pdf.

• https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-mandela-effect-4589394

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophilia

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mandela-effect-false-memories-explain-science-time-travel-parallel-universe-matrix-a8206746.html

• https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/shazaam-movie-sinbad-explained-2871049/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deese%E2%80%93Roediger%E2%80%93McDermott_paradigm

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique

• https://www.nostalgianerd.com/mandela-effect-solved/

• https://my.klarity.health/the-mandela-effect-and-its-impact-on-reality/

• https://www.verywellmind.com/can-you-trust-eyewitness-testimony-4579757

• https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/18/world/mandela-effect-collective-false-memory-scn

• https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe.htm

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

• https://www.home.cern/science/accelerators/how-accelerator-works

• https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-the-mandela-effect.html

• https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g28438966/mandela-effect-examples/

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/thoughts-on-thinking/202001/critically-thinking-about-the-mandela-effect