10 Examples of the Mandela Effect

Looney Toons and Looney Tunes? Berenstein Bears or Berenstain Bears? If you think the first choices to both questions are correct, then you could be suffering from something called “the Mandela Effect.” It’s the same phenomenon that makes people believe Curious George has a tail (he doesn’t) and that Darth Vader said “Luke, I am your father.”

Shockingly, there are many other instances of pseudomemories experienced by a large group of people, so many that it was dubbed the Mandela Effect by Fiona Broome, a blogger, over a decade ago. The term was coined after Broome uncovered the false belief in many (herself included) that Nelson Mandela had died in prison during the 1980s, when in reality, he died in 2013 as a free man.

Broome decided to talk to others about this and found that she wasn’t alone. There were plenty of people who told her that they even remembered watching news coverage of Mandela’s death and a speech from his widow. Broome didn’t understand how such a large population of people could all have the same false memories, and so she began to do more research.

Although doctors and researchers have yet to find a conclusive reason behind the Mandela Effect, there are some theories that this happens because of alternative timelines, confabulation (also known as honest lying), and other aspects of human memory.

But even if the Mandela Effect sounds preposterous, here are some examples of it that are bound to make you question reality:

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