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Does the Monopoly man have a monocle? Or is your memory playing tricks on you?
In this episode of The List Show, host Justin Dodd (@juddtoday) tackles this mysterious memory phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect. From Jiffy peanut butter to the classic 90s genie-comedy Shazaam, we're exploring shared false memories. How many did you "remember"?
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10 Mysterious Examples of the Mandela Effect | Mental Floss
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0:00
Let's do a little experiment
0:01
Picture the Monopoly man in your head right now, who, by the way, goes by Mr. Monopoly
0:06
incidentally, and canonically is actually named Rich Uncle Pennybags. What kind of middle name is Uncle
0:12
Besides the point, what does Mr. Monopoly look like? Maybe something like this
0:18
Well, if this is the Mr. Monopoly, you are picturing, sorry to say, you have fallen victim
0:23
to the Mandela Effect, and you're not alone. The Monopoly mascot has never, not once, been featured with a monocle
0:30
A fairly simple mistake to make, but how is it possible that so many people have experienced
0:36
this very specific memory mix-up? According to associate professor of cognitive psychology Dr. Jean Brewer, it's a matter
0:42
of memory reconstruction. As Brewer told Mental Floss in 2019, when you recall an event, you use memories around
0:49
it, taking elements or pieces of other events and fitting them where they make sense
0:54
For Mr. Monopoly, it's believed that many people are conflating his appearance with that
0:58
of Mr. Peanut, another prevalent fancy man mascot from around the same time period who
1:04
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
1:13
Let's see what other memories we can rewrite. So, where does the name Mandela Effect come from
1:26
A little over a decade ago, blogger and paranormal researcher Fiona Broom coined the term in
1:32
reference to one false shared memory in particular, the death of Nelson Mandela
1:37
Before you start to question your sanity, yes, the famous anti-apartheid leader did pass
1:42
away. That part is true, but the how and the when is apparently not something we all agree
1:47
on. It turns out that many people have a memory of him dying while imprisoned sometime in
1:52
the 1980s. This is odd, because Nelson Mandela died in 2013 as a free man. In response to
2:00
this bizarre, apparently widespread phenomenon, a whole slew of other instances of the Mandela
2:06
Effect were revealed. How about the famous peanut butter brand Jiffy? A classic. You
2:11
You can probably still see it in grocery stores today. Picture that famous label, complete with the Y at the end
2:18
Well, unfortunately, there is no Jiffy. There is Jif, which is what you're probably thinking of
2:22
but why do so many of us think it called Jiffy Dr Brewer once again points to confused memory reconstruction Skippy peanut butter is probably directly adjacent to Jif when you reaching for it at Publix and then Jif and Skippy somehow become Jiffy
2:38
This phenomenon is not unique to peanut butter brands. It's even been observed in experimental settings
2:43
According to Brewer, in studies when you show participants word pairs and ask them to remember
2:47
blackmail and jailbird, half of them will later say they remember learning the word blackbird
2:54
Let's do another experiment. Right now, do your best impression of Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs
3:00
Go ahead. If you have a cat or a dog, feel free to deliver it to them
3:04
They can be your Jodie Foster. Okay, very creepy. Good job, everybody
3:10
If you said, hello, Clarice, guess what? You just got Mandela. This is probably the most quoted line from that film
3:17
although Buffalo Bill's lotion line might be a close second, but Anthony Hopkins never says these words in The Silence of the Lambs
3:24
In this scene, you're probably remembering where he and Jodie Foster's character first
3:28
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
3:38
melodic tone in their heads. This is not far from the Darth Vader Mandela effect, which involves one of the most famous
3:44
movie quotes of all time. If your memory of the big reveal in The Empire Strikes Back involves Darth Vader saying the
3:50
words, Luke, I am your father, you should probably go back and watch that scene again
3:55
If you were a child at all during the 20th century, you probably remember the Berenstain Bears
4:00
Lovely series of books about a family of bears doing bear stuff. There are literally hundreds of
4:06
books, hundreds of covers that all feature the name Berenstain. Or did they? The name is actually
4:13
Baron Stain bears. Stain. Not steen, not stein, stain. A one-letter difference, sure, but
4:20
one that people have had a very hard time accepting. Of all the instances of the Mandela Effect
4:24
we've looked into, this is one of the most disputed ones, with people truly believing
4:29
that they used to be called Baron Stain and someone has taken painstaking lengths to rewrite history
4:35
I'm no expert on alternate realities, but I think maybe we all just got it wrong. It seems more
4:40
likely that the suffix stein or stein is just more common—einstein, frankenstein—that
4:46
our brains read that cursive A as an E to make it easier
4:50
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 always a loose pile of fruit which personally would not have been my top choice for a brand that sells boxer briefs but it neither here nor there
5:08
And yet, many people picture something resembling this image. This is potentially due to your brain trying to make sense of a memory
5:15
You know that there's a pile of fruit involved, and then you think, how is fruit often portrayed
5:20
Maybe a cornucopia. Memory reconstruction is not foolproof. movie business is not regarded as one of the most impactful films of all time. In fact
5:29
I don't remember anyone talking about any scene from that movie except for one in particular
5:35
Tom Cruise slides into the room wearing nothing but shades, an unbuttoned shirt, underwear
5:41
and some socks. He proceeds to lip sync to old-time rock and roll while dancing around
5:45
the room and cinema history is made. I've seen countless people dress up as Tom Cruise's
5:50
from this scene for Halloween, college parties, you name it. It's always the same outfit
5:56
but everyone gets it wrong. Tom Cruise is not wearing sunglasses in that scene. Where
6:02
does this prevalent mis-memory come from? Well, Tom Cruise does wear the iconic Ray-Ban
6:07
sunglasses in other scenes, and he's featured wearing them in some promotional material
6:12
for the film. But in that scene, his eyes are naked. Dr. Brewer attributes this to the
6:17
sheer amount of information in a film. Your brain can't memorize the whole thing. As
6:22
he says, when you go back to recreate it, you'll get interference from other things
6:26
that happened in the movie. We've spent a lot of this episode discussing modern instances of the Mandela Effect, modern
6:32
films, mascots, quotes. This makes sense because any collective error would probably be corrected
6:39
over time for something as classic as, say, the Mona Lisa, right? Well, guess again. One
6:45
One prevalent example of the Mandela Effect is apparently the presence, or lack thereof
6:50
of Mona Lisa's smile. Many people claim that Mona Lisa is frowning, or at the very least, not sporting a smile
6:57
of any kind. The fact that she is undoubtedly smirking in the famous portrait comes as quite a shock
7:03
to those who misremember. While I scoured the internet for Team Frowners, I even saw some believers claim that the images
7:11
of Mona Lisa available on the internet have all been photoshopped, giving her this fake
7:16
modern smile. This, they claim, is the true evidence of multiple realities. The most famous
7:22
painting of all time but with two different faces Dr Margaret Livingstone a Harvard neuroscientist points to another explanation Our perception of Mona Lisa smile changes based on where our eyes focus when looking
7:36
at her. Long story short, our peripheral vision is pretty bad at deciphering fine details, so
7:41
if you're focusing on her mouth, her eyes, or her forehead, you will interpret her mood
7:46
in three different ways. Luis Martinez-Otero, a researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience, puts it like this
7:54
Different cells in the retina transmit different categories of information or channels to the brain
8:00
Sometimes one channel wins over the other and you see the smile
8:04
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
8:13
that people remember fondly despite the fact that it never existed. I am, of course, talking about Shazam, a film from the 90s starring the comedian Sinbad
8:22
as a genie. While this might sound like an impossibly specific movie for multiple people to fabricate
8:28
there is an obvious jumping-off point. There was a film in 1996 called Kazam, starring Shaquille O'Neal as a genie, which is obviously
8:36
what people are remembering, but how is it that so many people remember it specifically
8:40
being another actor with a different title? Some sources point to the fact that Sinbad had a couple successful comedies in the 90s
8:47
around the time of Kazam's release. And, more specifically, on the VHS copy of Sinbad's film First Kid, there's a trailer
8:56
for Kazam. Combine that with the existence of a comic book superhero named Shazam, and the fact
9:02
that Sinbad looks like a man who knows his way around a pair of genie pants, you've
9:06
got yourself a recipe for misapprehension. This bizarre film conflation is so prevalent that even Dr. Brewer, our resident Mandela
9:15
Effect explainer, admitted to remembering this fictional film. Could these processes that lead to false memories be considered flaws
9:24
Not exactly. Current theories in psychology are exploring the idea that our ability to cull details
9:29
from past experiences to create theoretical concepts is actually part of a survival mechanism
9:35
Brewer told us that, Taking episodes from our past allows us to construct possible futures and anticipate those events
9:42
It makes us adaptive to new environments. Like living in a world without Jiffy Peanut Butter
9:49
If you've ever experienced a Mandela Effect, or if there's one we did not mention, let
9:53
us know in the comments. Make sure to subscribe to Mental Floss so you can catch more videos just like this every week
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