The Mandela Effect, and my experience with it.

The Mandela Effect is when a large group of people remember something being one way, but it is actually another way. Meaning, they remembered it incorrectly. Some popular examples of this are “Beam me up, Scotty” in Star Trek, “Luke, I am your father” in Star Wars, The spelling of the Berenstain Bears children’s books, the spelling of Double Stuf Oreos, “Mirror Mirror on the wall” in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “Hello, Clarice” in The Silence of the Lambs, etc. As kids, we perceived these things differently and now as adults, we are seeing our memories shattered by reality. It’s mind-blowing to know that we’ve been reading or saying something wrong all along. And it is such a wide spread thing. Most people still might not even know these things. I decided to write about a few of my personal examples of this. Or, just some that came to my mind recently while watching videos on this subject.

The first one that came to mind was the perceived idea that Stuart Minkus played a bigger part in Boy Meets World than he actually did. True, Girl Meets World kind of aided in that idea, but I still felt it was something to talk about here. In the sequel show, Stuart's son is a huge part of the new cast. He is an ever present foil to the main character and her friends. A great addition, of course. But they allude to the idea that his father was also that in the original show, when in fact, he was barely in it. He popped up only two or three times throughout the course of Boy Meets World. The character is still so widely known that people just forget that he wasn’t a regular.

Another personal example I have is from Saved by the Bell. As a kid, I watched the show a lot. I’d get up bright and early just so I could watch it (and a few other shows) with my mom before school. I remember Zack and Kelly being together for most of the show. And I remember them being great together. I remember looking up to them, even. They were ‘relationship goals” for little me. But then I re-watched the series as an adult. Boy was I shocked to have seen that the ideas I had of them were very, very wrong. True, this could just be a case of me being a child and not knowing any better with love and relationships. But, I don’t think it was that at all. I think a lot of people may have had these same ideas. Zack and Kelly were one of the “it” couples in the 90’s. But by 2019’s standards, they were a disaster! I guess that’s why the Zack Morris is Trash series was made. As for the time they actually spent as a couple, they were more off than on in the series.

And lastly, one that many of us got wrong...Friday the 13th. In the 1980 film, Pamela Voorhees was actually the killer. But most people mistakenly thought Jason was instead. Humorously, that was cleared up when Scream brought it up almost two decades later. But i’d bet that you could still get somebody with this one even today. It’s just something you don’t really think about. Jason is the face and focus of the series, so it seems only natural that he’d always be the killer. Especially in the first one, right?

What are some of your experiences with the Mandela Effect? What things do you remember being one way growing up, but turned out to be a completely different way? How do you think this happens to us? Could it just be our memories playing tricks on us, or could it be the theory that’s floating around out there that we are living in parallel dimensions where these things were as we remembered them? What do you think?

#MandelaEffect