The Mandela Effect: Solved ✅

In the early 90s I was attending Cromer Junior School. Here it is on Google Maps, it was converted into housing the year after I left, but as you can see, it’s an old school… school. Cromer is a seaside town located in Norfolk, on the east coast of England. It’s not a huge town, but it has a good tourist location, and importantly a beach. A beach meant swimming. It also meant that teaching swimming was high on the agenda of the local school. For us, that meant a short trip to Cromer High school every other week, in order to use their, fairly dilapidated swimming pool. This pool was shared by various schools in the region, with all lessons taught by one man; Mr. Brooklander. For years we frequented these lessons, all taught by this noble lone man until one day the lessons stopped, and a letter was sent home.

Brooklander was dead, seemingly from natural causes. From that point onwards we had a different swimming teacher. I can’t even recall their name. Ms. Swimtastic or something. That is until High School started, who of course, used the same pool. A few weeks in, I went into a swimming lesson and there he was, Brooklander, apparently alive and well, noble as ever and eager to teach us how to swim.

How the actual fuck did this occur? No one knows, but what I do know is that my best friend, Michael, who had also moved up from Cromer Junior school, experienced the same thing. We got a letter home. Brooklander was dead. A year later, he was teaching us. Weirdly, he then died a year or two later, again apparently, and we got a letter home. SAYING THE SAME THING AS LAST TIME.

It’s easy to write this off as tricks of the mind. But, it happened. I experienced the whole process. This isn’t something I made up years later. I was as shocked to see him then, as I am talking about it now. I talked about it at the time. I talked to my parents about it. Michael remembers it, even though we were in different year groups, but everyone else seemed to shrug it off.

What gives? Did my friend and I split onto an alternative parallel universe somehow. Are we all just weaving in and out of slightly different timelines. Convening, parting, reconvening…. or were Michael and I just utterly trippin’ ballz.

This localised phenomenon we experienced now has a name. It’s called The Mandela Effect, and it’s called that because a huge swathe of people seem to remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison sometime in the 80s. He of course didn’t. He was released from prison in 1990, becoming the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 and then dying in 2013. It was paranormal researcher Fiona Broome who coined the term¹ after sharing her clear memory of Mandela having died during the 80s, and since then, it’s been used to describe hundreds of instances where collective memories seem to differ from reality.

So what gives? Is there something we’re missing? Was something misconstrued? Or is something a whole lot weirder going on? Well I’ll come back to that later.

Usually the Mandela Effect applies to things we don’t really pay full attention to, or where we presume something without looking into all the facts.

Let’s take some well known examples;

In 1851 textile mill owners Robert and Benjamin Knight founded the BB and R Knight Corporation in Rhode Island, United States. 5 years later they established the brand “Fruit of the Loom” whilst producing muslin cloths. A friend, Rufus Skeel sold produce from the mill, with Skeel’s daughter painting images of fruit on the various cloth bolts. These images would quickly form the basis of the logo for the new brand, featuring a medley of fruits in front of a cornucopia. The cornucopia itself a horn shaped container often used to symbolise abundance and plenty.

BUT THE CORNUCOPIA WAS NEVER PART OF THE LOGO…. EVER. ² It was just a simple collection of fruits, even as far back as this 1921 advert.

Now we all know The Monopoly Man, or Mr. Monopoly, to state his official name. Although Parker Bros got hold of the Monopoly rights in 1935, the character actually evolved over a decade later. Depicted as a sophisticated, older gentleman from the early 20th century, he was originally taken from the 1946 Parker Bros game Rich Uncle. Now, you might expect that Rich Uncle Pennybags would wear a monocle, after all, it fits with his image, and indeed, most of us remember that do be the case. However, he never did. Never has. This memory seems to be so strong that even newspapers would reference the character’s monocle well before we delved down this Mandela Effect rabbit hole.

Let’s move onto Disney. Now from the release of Return to Oz in 1985, Disney consistently started using an intro depicting Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World in Florida. There are variations, but the main core depiction is this flat castle, with the blue background. But, a LOT of people seem to remember a version of this, including me, where Tinkerbell flies around the castle, writes out the Disney logo and then dots the *I*, before flying off again. The thing is, this intro doesn’t seem to exist.

How about Looney Toons? A product of Warner Bros, designed to rival Disney and their Mickey Mouse character, this whole escapade started way back in 1930 with the short animation “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub”. The series then spawned a huge wave of associated characters and animations. We all remember watching Looney Toons on a Sunday morning right? Well, wrong. It is, and apparently always was, Looney TUNES. That doesn’t make sense right? We’re watching a cartoon, not a symphony, so it must have been “Looney Toons”?

The one thing most of the famous Mandela Effects have, is that they’re mascots, branding, title screens, logos; things we see so often. That may indeed be the reason they’re so famous. But it could also indicate that maybe we’re just not paying attention to the details. We’re skimming over it. After all, we’ve seen it a million times, it’s already engrained in our brain, right?

Ok, so maybe we should look past the title screens, and into the content itself. As we’re on cartoons, let’s stick with that.

Well let’s go back to Mickey Mouse. Now this one hit me hard. It was actually whilst I was researching this video, and I saw a thread mentioning Mickey Mouse’s suspenders. Immediately, my brain envisaged a scene from the 1928 animation Steam Boat Willie where Mickey Mouse is standing, whistling, swaying back and forth, and he snaps his suspenders. Now this memory was clear as day in my mind, yet it’s not in the animation at all. Mickey doesn’t even snap some pretend suspenders as some have suggested.

Ok, how about the 1969 Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. A spin off of the Wacky Races series, depicting our duo attempting to catch a messenger pigeon named Yankee Doddle PIgeon.

Ok, now remember the “Catch the Pigeon” intro scene? Sure you do, “Catch the Pigeon, Catch the Pigeon”. IT’S NOT CATCH THE PIGEON, it’s “Stop the Pigeon”… Yes, even the comments on YouTube are in bewilderment.

Some people even think there must have been a UK only dub. But there was no dub. This isn’t a Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles situation.

It just keeps happening.

So maybe we should turn to video games.

After all, they’re consistent, especially older releases that lack DLC and updates. But more importantly, we spent a lot of time playing these games. We scrutinised every damn pixel. Looked for every hidden room. Every cheat code. Every little cool animation. So to that end, surely, we’d be experts on everything there is to know?

But from Call of Duty signs appearing out of the blue, to imagined multiplayer experiences in Halo, to the playable Red Robin character in Mortal Kombat II, there are many, many, MANY instances of reported false memories in our games as well, and they don’t seem to have a single point of origin. No, these are shared memories, consistent around the globe.

One of the most well known is from Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Released in November 1985, this is a game that has had countless play time around the globe. For many, it’s their first gaming experience, from the first jump to their first encounter with that Piranha Plant… on World 1-1. Right?

No. Turns out there is no Piranha Plant in level one of Super Mario Bros.

Most players seem to remember there being a plant on the 3rd pipe. They seem to recall entering the pipe, going through the bonus screen and exiting at the end of stage 1. But no matter which version you play, it doesn’t exist. The plants don’t appear until the second level, underground.

This is a memory that’s shared so far and wide, that people re-create the Piranha in Super Mario Maker. There are countless Reddit threads, forum posts and comments of people gob-smacked that they can’t find this gobbling plant.

Ok, so in 1996 Pokemon Red and Green were released for the Nintendo Game Boy introducing us to Pikachu, designed by Atsuko Nishida. Witnessing his popularity, the third game released worldwide, Pokemon Yellow, features Pikachu on the box art, although the tip of his tail is cut off. The black tip of his tail. Right? Wrong.

Pikachu doesn’t have a black tip on his tail, he never did. On his ears, sure, but never the tail. Despite this you’ll find a shed load of fan art depicting Pikachu with a black tip on his tail.

Another Nintendo false memory is on Mario Kart 64, released in December 1996 and offering a gigantic step up in graphical finesse over the Super Nintendo iteration.

But like the Super Nintendo version, we were graced with a Rainbow Road level; notorious for being one of the most difficult tracks throughout the series. Mainly because if you slide too far, you’re a goner.

Players from around the world can be found on forums and posts, furious with the difficulty of the N64’s rainbow road, constantly having to be saved by Fishin’ Lakitu, and usually ranking in the bottom half of proceedings.

However, despite so many memories attesting this, N64 Rainbow road had guard rails along the sides of the entire track. Meaning that, unless you hopped around like a nut case, it was pretty darn hard to actually fall off the track.

There are people in Reddit posts claiming that they MUST have been privy to an early version of the game, and at some point, Nintendo CLEARELY released a better, bug-fixed version. But we know very well that this wouldn’t happen. If a game was ready to be shipped, it was shipped, and that’s how it stayed.

Perhaps it could be explained by people associating early preview screen shots with their playing experience. I’ve definitely done that before. But no matter where you look, and which pre-release build, all versions of Mario Kart 64 had the rails in place on Rainbow road.

So what gives?

There are countless theories on what’s occurring. Some of the chief ones are based around Quantum Mechanics and the multi-verse theory where we’re indeed flitting from one reality to the next, with our memories from the previous universe still intact. It’s been discussed on documentaries, podcasts, and countless times in the media. But I’d like something a bit more scientific than…. this.

In 2022 Deepasri Prasad and Wilma A. Bainbridge from the department of psychology at the University of Chicago produced a paper titled “The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People”, and after having a chat with Wilma Bainbridge, I found myself knee deep in a world where we look at The Mandela effect as a psychological phenomenon, with potential cause and effect.

Let’s disseminate it. In this study, four different tests were performed. The first was to present a range of graphics to 100 participants to determine whether they could identify the canonical versions correctly. This included 22 characters, 16 brand logos and two symbols. Of these a manipulated version was introduced, with a well known Visual Mandela Effect (VME) alteration, alongside an alternative manipulation, offering a subtle difference, but not one known to be a VME. Participants were then asked to gauge their confidence in selecting the correct option, their familiarity with the graphic, and how many times they believe they had seen the logo before.

Testing the Mandela Effect;

Every manipulation was selected at least once, however the VMEs for C-3PO, Fruit of the Loom, Curious George, Pikachu, Monopoly Man, Volkswagen and Where’s Waldo (or Wally for us Brits) was much more significant than the others. These being, famously, common Mandela Effect memories. Interestingly, Tom from Tom and Jerry was also quite high. The difference in shade seemingly another common false memory, however it doesn’t rank high enough to fall outside of chance. But all of the core VMEs were identified with a high familiarity and confidence. Mistakes made on the other graphic identifications were of a lower confidence.

So, this indicates that people who identified the VME logos were very confident of their accuracy, compared to your average misidentification.

Experiment two…

was to take a second group and present participants with a canonical graphic as a blurred image for 250ms and then give them a mouse controllable aperture to view the image for at least 5 seconds; designed to mimic eye movement. They were then asked to select whether they saw a manipulated version or the canonical version.

Participants who were shown the Monopoly man, C3PO, Fruit of the Loom, Curious George, Pikachu, Waldo and the Volkswagen logo were far less likely to choose the correct image, at 52% compared with 82.4% for non-VME images.

Of those who selected the correct version, they tended to note a specific feature in identifying the graphic, such as they “only saw the fruit, not the cornucopia”, however of those who selected the VME, they did the same “I’m pretty sure it had a basket”. In fact, those who gave the incorrect match were more likely to attribute it to the memory of a feature that wasn’t present in the original (66.5%).

To search for bias, participants were also asked what they thought the study was about, with only 8.6% mentioning “The Mandela Effect” or “False Memory”.

A third experiment…

was then conducted to determine if prior exposure to altered VME images in real-world contexts could have influenced memory errors. To do this result sets were scraped from Google to analyse the prevalence of canonical vs. VME versions. The result was that most icons were predominantly represented in their canonical form, apart from C-3PO and Waldo who had a higher occurrence of VME versions, which COULD explain errors due to prior exposure. For Fruit of the Loom, VME errors preceded widespread exposure to the manipulated version, suggesting other factors at play.

The final experiment…

was to test whether VME errors would occur during free recall of images. To do this participants were first gauged as to whether they were familiar with a logo or not. If they were then, they were given an unlimited amount of time to draw the graphic from memory. If they were not, then they were shown the canon graphic for 5 seconds, and then asked to draw it from short term memory.

The outcome of this was that almost half of long-term memory drawings, of the 7 subset, included VME errors. However, for those unfamiliar with the imagery, drawing from short term memory, still in fact led over 20% of participants to re-create VME errors in their drawing. This increased dramatically to 100% for C-3PO, with all drawings depicting that he had 2 gold legs, rather than one.

For control images outside of this subset, there were only 7% of drawing errors overall. Suggesting that VME-apparent images for some reason, uniquely elicit consistent false memories, whether the participant has just been exposed to them or not.

The paper concludes…

that VME is a genuine psychological phenomenon with shared, consistent memory errors across people in both short-term and long-term memory, but is far more apparent with particular depictions, suggesting that one reason is due to schema-driven perception.

Schema theory suggests that people use pre-existing knowledge structures (schemas) to fill in gaps in memory. This process often results in scheme-consistent errors, where details aligning with expectations are falsely remembered.

This can alone explain many of the current Visual Mandela Effects. Take Rich Uncle Pennybags. Our brains associate this rich top hat wearing character with the likes of Mr. Peanut, Charles Coborn, and other such stereotypical wealthy portrayals, who all happen to have a monocle, and so we tend to assume that Pennybags has one too. If we take a character like The Fat Controller, or Sir Toppem Hat, if you prefer from Thomas the Tank engine, the same is true. There are forums, Reddit posts and even polls asking where his monocle is, with respondents weirdly giving accuracy at about the same percentage as the second test of the Research paper.

Of course, he doesn’t have one, but he does have the Top hat and tails we associate with one.

We can also use this to explain the “Looney Toons” problem. If you look back at the 90s, even newspapers would write entire articles referencing “Looney Toons” instead of “Tunes”³⁴⁵⁶, because that made the most sense; it fit the Cartoon schema better than “Tunes” ever would, and of course, Loon rhymes with Toon. But if we replace that schema with the actual backstory that in the 1920s Disney originally created short films set to music called “Silly Symphonies”. Warner Bros wanted a piece of this action, so created two of their own short film sets called “Merrie Meolodies” and “Looney Tunes”, and this stuck, even when the music became less of the show. Then we can update that schema with something which makes sense. Without it our brain just has to hear the homophone of “Looney Toons” and *click*, our memory is set to what follows the cartoon schema.

Let’s also not forget that Tune in America is actually pronounced Toon. You can see why this is such a common false memory.

In the same way “catching a pigeon” makes far more sense than “stopping a pigeon”, and this could easily be an instance where we’re recalling something that fits the situation, over something that doesn’t. Almost as if our minds are correcting the discrepancies.

To a lesser degree, this can also explain the Pikachu VME. Although Pikachu’s tale never had a black tip, his ears definitely do, so it’ fair to assume this pattern carries through to the tale, especially when squinting at a low resolution Game Boy screen where it’s difficult to tell one way or another.

Source Confusion with VR

A 2015 Research paper by Deboarah Scearce-Miles of Fielding Graduate University came up with similar problems whilst exploring whether experiences in virtual environments, such as video games, can lead to false memories; where individuals confuse virtual memories with real life experiences. Although the results of this study were inconclusive, it found that participants were remembering items they expected to be in each virtual or real setting, depending on the environment. For example, in mocked up offices, participants recalled there being notebooks and pens, when in fact, there weren’t any. This is again, schema-consistent where “gaps in their memory” were filled with objects they expected, but did not necessarily see.

However, this isn’t the only explanation. Prasad and Bainbridge also conclude that there are other causes at play, some of which entangle, distorting our memories somewhat. We call this Source Confusion, and it means that we interchange certain memories or associate certain memories with material other than the original source. Even when participants had extensive exposure to canonical versions of the graphics, occasional encounters with altered versions caused interference with accurate recall.

We can also apply this to Looney Tunes, simply because a spin-off made by Warner Bros in the 90s, Tiny Toon Adventures, did actually use the word Toon, with very similar styling to the original series. Which could easily cause confusion between the two.

We can also apply this to Rainbow Road on the N64. Sure it has rails, but Rainbow Road on other versions, including the Super Nintendo, doesn’t. The fact that you can still fall off the track by flying over the rails could cause some memory entanglement. This is enhanced even more if you’ve played the Mario Kart 8 version of N64 Rainbow Road, because a lot of it does not in fact have those rails.

It’s the same for Super Mario. The first level doesn’t have the Piranha, but World 2-1 does, as does Super Mario Bros 3, World 1-1. They’re not on the third pipe. they’re on the first. But, this could easily be an example of a memory bleeding into another.

We can also apply this to C-3PO. Although the film version of the character has one silver leg. Most depictions outside of that, including the original toys, feature two golden legs. It makes perfect sense then, that we’d expect the same in the film. Plus most of us watched this on VHS. With that kind of quality we never stood a chance, and it’s safe to assume his gold body is gold.

If we take Steam Boat Willie, although Micky Mouse doesn’t wear braces, there is a parody in season 4 of the Simpsons called “Steamboat Itchy” where Scratchy appears wearing braces whilst rocking back and forth whilst whistling. He however, doesn’t snap his braces as I, and others remember. There are however, various instances in the media, toys and even Disney animations where Micky does wear suspenders, including the 1937 animation, Clock Cleaners. Suggesting maybe this memory originates from somewhere else.

Which itself is another problem. Over the years, we have lost a lot of media. The number of promotional trailers that appeared on certain TV channels, but which no longer exist are numerous. This could in part explain the Disney Tinkerbell introduction. Certainly there is no sign of it in the standard Disney introductions. However, we do get inklings of it in certain special intros.

Various Wonderful World of Disney Intros do actually depict something pretty similar, as does the 1997 video, The Magic Behind the Masterpiece, a film about the making of Bambi.

But no matter how hard we look, it is entirely possible that some media is just lost to time, leading us and others to continually gaslight ourselves about its existence.

What about the Others?

Of course, there are countless other famous Mandela effects. Most of which can be explained away with these principles, and quite often, a combination of them. Lots of people seem to remember seeing the full alien’s face at the end of Men in Black, but imagination can be a powerful thing, and if something isn’t complete, we’ll fill in the blanks, especially kids.

However there will always, always be people who swear blind about what they saw or heard, and maybe they did. No one is privy to the experience of anyone else, at least not on a mental level, so who are we to correct someone’s reality, when we’ve never experienced it ourselves.

Our experiences and therefore our memories, even of the same incident vary hugely. Things worth memorising for one person, might simply be worthless to another. Take Brooklander. That was clearly a powerful and important memory for me and Michael, but to others, it wasn’t even worth noting.

But it is worth noting that the human mind is incredible susceptible to manipulation. We all like to assume we’re reasonable and rational, but, hearing your friend Doug sing the incorrect version of a cartoon theme tune, or create some fan art that doesn’t quite match the original will all compound seeds of doubt that can very quickly become canonical in our own minds.

So, Did Mandela Actually Die in Prison?

So what about the most famous of them all, the reason why it’s even called the Mandela effect in the first place? Well, I took it upon myself to do a deep dive into this and discover why, if any reason, people believed that Nelson Mandela did actually die in prison in the 1980s.

This isn’t just a notion put forward by Fiona Broome. Thousands of people share this memory, and like most other “Mandela Effects” there are countless forum posts, Reddit threads and videos attesting to this. Some claim to have heard it on the news, whilst others like Black-Cat11 claim they heard it through school, with the class spending the remainder of the day talking about his life. Another commenter SweetCommunication51 claims to have also heard it in 1985 during school.

Of course, here is the video footage captured by various news outlets showing him being released from prison on 11th February 1990 at 16:14 local time, so clearly these memories are problematic. Well, no. Maybe, it’s not the memory that’s problematic. Maybe it’s the information we originally received that’s problematic.

I’ve done a lot of digging into this, and it seems that during 1985, in various newspapers, there were stories running that actually claim Nelson Mandela had, in fact died.⁷⁸⁹

In fact throughout this period, even taking the rumours being spread out of the equation, stories were appearing on a regular basis about Mandela’s health¹⁰, and the fact that if he wasn’t already dead, he could be dead very soon. There was a whole world of media seemingly designed to shock us. The New York Times reported on August 17 1988 about Mandela being hospitalised with life threatening complications; something that could be taken out of context.

And this is really, another very important explanation for the Mandela Effect and any false memories.

Sometimes, as humans, we get things wrong. We take things out of context, something is misconstrued, exaggerated, misunderstood or we just lie, and that sh*t can stay with the recipient of that information for a long time. It can form a memory, and that memory can take on a life of it’s own. The longer it stays with us, the more true it must be, and sometimes, it can be very difficult to question what we remember, especially when what we actually remember wasn’t the problem in the first place.

For me, that’s where Mandela lies, and that’s also where Brooklander lies.

Whether I’m right or not, only history knows.

Until next time, I’ve been Nostalgia Nerd. Toodleoo.

1. www.britannica.com/science/Mandela-effect [↩]
2. www.snopes.com/fact-check/fruit-of-the-loom-cornucopia/ [↩]
3. www.newspapers.com/image/125266011/?match=1&terms=looney%20toons [↩]
4. www.newspapers.com/image/922590382/?match=1&terms=looney%20toons [↩]
5. www.newspapers.com/image/905571699/?match=1&terms=looney%20toons [↩]
6. www.newspapers.com/image/125479685/?match=1&terms=looney%20toons [↩]
7. www.newspapers.com/image/582422991/?match=1&terms=mandela%20rumored%20dead [↩]
8. www.newspapers.com/image/129638425/?match=1&terms=mandela%20had%20died [↩]
9. www.newspapers.com/image/641036159/?match=1&terms=nelson%20mandela%20dead%20in%20prison [↩]
10. www.nytimes.com/1988/08/17/world/mandela-hospitalized-with-tuberculosis-lawyer-says.html [↩]