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Do you remember a fantasy film from the 1990s in which Sinbad played a genie? Well, it never existed. The Shazaam conspiracy is an internet phenomenon that all started with an innocent Yahoo! Answers question inquiring if anyone else "remembered" the movie. A film named Kazaam starring Shaquille O'Neal as a goofy genie did come out in 1996, but Shazaam truthers are adamant that not only were they two different films, but that Kazaam was simply a cheap knock-off of the brilliance that was Shazaam.
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You remember that 90s family fantasy movie Shazam where the comedian Sinbad played a genie
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You know, he gets summoned by these two kids and promises to grant them wishes, but he's
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sort of bumbling and screws everything up and then it ends in a big pool party with all
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the kids' friends? Remember that? No, you don't. That movie doesn't exist
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So why are so many people so certain they remember seeing it? Well, today we're investigating the Sinbad genie movie that never existed
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no matter what people on the internet tell you. All right, first kids, let's jingle all the way
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As with many old school internet legends, the exact origin of the misremembered Shazam movie
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is impossible to definitively track down. The mythical film first came to mainstream attention in 2009
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when an anonymous user posted this query to Yahoo Answers. Do you remember that Sinbad movie
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Wasn't there a movie in the early 90s where Sinbad, the entertainer slash comedian, played a genie
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I know Kazam had Shaq in it, and that's not the one I'm thinking about. Help, it's driving me nuts
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No one in that initial Yahoo Answers thread claimed to remember the movie
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And the topic quickly dropped off the front page. Two years later, a Redditor brought the question back
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claiming to have been the victim of a conspiracy to suppress knowledge about Shazam
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But again, the idea was met with silence or derision, as no one else claimed to remember the film
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The world at large seemed to agree. Sinbad was never in a film about a genie, and these few random people were just misremembering something else
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Jump ahead to 2015, when now-defunct internet news outlet Vice ran a story about the so-called Mandela Effect
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describing a phenomenon in which a large group of people all claimed to share the same false memory
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The term was coined by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome, who said she had vivid and clear
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memories of South African anti-apartheid activist and leader Nelson Mandela dying in prison
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in the 1980s. Of course, that's not what happened. Mandela served 27 years in prison, but was released in 1990 by then-South African president F.W
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DeClercq. Just four years later, Mandela was elected leader of a new coalition government
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He passed away decades later, in December 2013, at age 95. During the course of her research, Broom spoke with hundreds of other people who claimed to share her memory of Mandela dying in prison
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She speculated that the phenomenon could be evidence of parallel realities. Perhaps Broom and the others who recalled Mandela's death were from an alternate universe that had somehow bled into our own
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explaining why they can recall events that did not take place in our world
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The Vice article focused on another example of the Mandela effect, concerning the illustrated children's books, the Berenstain Bears
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Many people on Reddit and other forums claimed that the characters were named the Berenstain Bears with an E Based on all the available evidence at least in our reality the Bears are named for their creators Marriott author Stanley and Jan Berenstain
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who spelled their last name S-T-A-I-N. But so many people were positive that they were always the Berenstain Bears
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It had helped to popularize the concept of the Mandela Effect and Broome's theory about parallel realities
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Yes, every spelling exists everywhere, all at once. After the Vice article made the Mandela Effect mainstream
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it boosted interest in stories about subgroups within the population recalling significant historical and pop culture events differently
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More and more discussions started popping up about the Sinbad Genie movie
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and more and more internet users claim to have specific memories of watching it in the 1990s
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Unlike most other examples of the Mandela Effect, The existence of Shazam is not a minor detail that can be easily explained away as a false memory
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This is not the spelling of a last name or even a half-recalled breaking news story about the loss of a global leader
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This is an entire movie, which some people are claiming to recall in striking detail
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Redditors have collaboratively provided a full plot synopsis for the film. Sinbad stars as a genie, freed from a magic lamp by a brother and sister duo
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raised by a dedicated but lonely single dad. They decide to use their three wishes to find their dad a new partner
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But Shazam is a bumbling genie, and things don't always go according to plan
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Following some wacky hijinks, the film closes with the family hosting a pool party
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where the genie and the kid's plan finally comes together. Many remember a scene in which the children wish for a mountain of gumballs
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though it's unclear how this is meant to advance their overall matchmaking goal. Others recall the sister thoughtlessly wasting one of her wishes on fixing a broken doll
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There are also numerous accounts of a sequence in which the genie accompanies the children to a shopping mall
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But that is not all. Other commenters claim to remember the film's poster
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which apparently featured Sinbad dressed as a genie in an arms-crossed pose in front of a purple background
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Others claim to remember that Phil Hartman, who co-starred with Sinbad in both Houseguest and Jingle All the Way
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was a writer and producer on the film. That's an impressive level of detail for a movie that has never existed
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One sci-fi explanation for the Mandela Effect has been proposed by Redditors who insist Shazam was totally real
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Some point out the writings of Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has suggested that our world could be a quantum computer simulation
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being run by a technologically advanced future civilization studying their ancestors, i.e., us
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If his hypothesis is true, and the entire world that we know is just a very advanced computer program
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this could explain changes or errors like the sudden disappearance of a 90s family comedy from existence
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It could even be a test to see how our primitive minds will grapple with divergent or contradictory memories While it technically possible that people remembering Shazam are from another reality
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or that we're all trapped in the Matrix and Shazam is a deja vu-like glitch
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there is another, less imaginative but more practical, explanation for what's happening
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Human memory is statistically unreliable, so people may simply be remembering things inaccurately
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How's that for philosophy, Bostrom? There are a number of film and TV projects from the 80s and 90s that could help explain
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why so many people feel like they saw a Sinbad movie about a genie that they did not actually see
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Most compelling of all is the existence of the 1996 musical comedy film Kazam
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starring Shaquille O'Neal as a 5,000-year-old genie summoned by a teenage boy from a magical boombox
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Kazaam was a box office bomb upon its initial release in July of 1996
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coming right on the heels of box office juggernaut Independence Day, but it continued to air on cable for many years after
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Beyond that title and the fact that they star tall, popular black celebrities as genies
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similarities between Kazaam and Shazam are numerous. The poster for Kazaam features Shaq making an arms-crossed pose in front of a purple background
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The plot finds him helping a boy reunite with his estranged father
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Previews for Kazam even appeared on the VHS tapes for the Disney movie First Kid, which did star Sinbad
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Die-hard Shazam believers have tried to explain away this discrepancy over the years
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Some rationalizations include the idea that Kazam was a ripoff, designed to build on the success of Shazam
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Or this was one of those familiar scenarios in which studios released two similar films around the same time
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as with Pixar's A Bug's Life and DreamWorks Ants. or the twin deadly Meteor movies, Armageddon and Deep Impact
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But if that's true, how come no blockbuster on Earth ever carried a copy
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There are even more pop culture artifacts that could have also contributed to this confusion
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A TV series from beloved animation studio Hanna-Barbera called Shazam aired on CBS from 1967 through 68
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The series followed the adventures of a brother and sister pair, Chuck and Nancy, who explored
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a mythological version of Arabia, along with a titular genie who would use his powers to
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get them out of scrapes. Shazam could also be an inaccurate recollection of a 1995 sketch from Nickelodeon's classic
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series All That. Series regular Kenan Thompson played a recurring character named Ishboo, a foreign exchange
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student who hypnotized people using a swinging jewel that he wore around his neck
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Sinbad guest hosted a season two episode and joined in as Sinbu, Ishbu's father, who wore
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shiny clothing, spoke in a weird foreign accent, and wore his hair pulled up into a bun. It's
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certainly possible people are misremembering Sinbu as Shazam. Additionally, the name Sinbad
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refers not just to the family comedian but to a famed mythological mariner Sinbad the who appears in a number of Middle Eastern folk tales including the 1001 Nights Anthology Collection And our modern ideas about genies and magic lamps also arise from Middle Eastern folklore
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and mythology, including 1001 Nights specifically. He may not be a household name, but stories about Sinbad the Sailor are still familiar
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in the U.S. The memorable 1973 fantasy adventure The Golden Voyage of Sinbad features iconic special effects
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by stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. And Brad Pitt voiced the character in the 2003 DreamWorks animated film Sinbad
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Legend of the Seven Seas. That's more than enough of a presence
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in our pop culture landscape to potentially generate some confusion. Why wouldn't Sinbad make a movie about a genie
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His name is Sinbad. Plus, a wisecracking genie seems in line with the characters he actually has played
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Adding even more to the confusion was the discovery of an old still featuring Sinbad the comedian dressed up in vaguely genie-esque garb
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including a turban, puffy white shirt, and vest. When this first started spreading online
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it seemed like the Shazam enthusiasts had finally locked down some actual incontrovertible proof that the film existed
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But it turns out, the image comes from a 1994 movie marathon series
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that aired on the TNT cable network, in which celebrities presented marathons of their favorite films
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Sinbad introduced a collection of, you guessed it, Sinbad the Sailor Movies
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and dressed the part for his hosting segments. If we accept that Shazam genuinely never existed
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the legends that sprung from it provide a fascinating insight into collective memory
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and how relatively simple it can be to influence the way other people recall situations
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even ones in which they believe they participated or witnessed. Washington University memory expert Dr. Henry L. Roediger III has suggested that our memories
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are actually infectious, adding, people infer events and then remember the inferences as
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if they actually happen. For example, he says if you hear the phrase, the karate teacher hit the boards, you might
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later remember that the teacher broke the boards, even though that's not what you heard
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In that situation, you have made an assumption that isn't actually supported by the information
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you received. Sometimes our brains will make these inferences almost subconsciously, and it happens all the time
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This can clearly be applied to 90s genie movies. People saw or heard about Kazam, then heard about the Sinbad Shazam confusion
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and now remember that suggestion in place of the original movie. College humor only added to the problem on April Fool's Day 2017
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when they released fake footage shot with the real Sinbad recreating lost footage from Shazam
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While the comedian himself had previously attempted to set the record straight
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and remind fans that he had never played a genie in the 90s, now all bets were off
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And the entire internet was all in on committing to the bit. In other words, people believed in the movie so much that it came true
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Kind of like a wish from a genie