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Another "Mandela Effect": Shazaam, a '90s children's comedy movie that never existed.

JoeMorgue

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JoeMorgue
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Another "Mandela Effect": Shazaam, a '90s children's comedy movie that never existed.

So remember the recent... thing about the Berenstein/Berenstain Bears name and the discussion about mass social level false memories or even memories of alternate dimensions?

We've got another one. A wacky 90s children's movie that starred stand up comedian Sinbad as a genie named Shazaam that over 300 Redditors claim to remember seeing but that never seemed to actually exist.

Carl, whose name has been changed because he wishes to remain anonymous, recalls watching a movie called Shazaam with his sister in the early Nineties, and has fond memories of discussing it with her over the last 20 years. In their recollections, the movie starred the American stand-up comedian Sinbad – real name David Adkins – as an incompetent genie who granted wishes to two young children.

Meredith Upton, a 25-year-old videographer from Nashville, Tennessee, also remembers the same film.

Don goes even further. Although he is not certain that the movie was called Shazaam, he has detailed scene-by-scene recollections of the film, which include the children wishing for a new wife for their father, the little girl wishing for her broken doll to be fixed, and the movie finale taking place at a pool party.

Meredith, Don, and Carl are three of hundreds of Redditors who have used the popular social news site to discuss their memories of Shazaam. Together they have scoured the internet to find evidence that the movie existed but each has repeatedly come up empty-handed.
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http://www.newstatesman.com/science...doesn-t-exist-and-redditors-who-think-it-does
 
I would immediately associate "Shazam!" with the 70s TV show: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071050/

From there it's easy to mix that up with the cartoon genie Shazzan. The comedy component may be an association with cartoon genie Babu.

Then there was the movie Kazaam, which was so horrible that people might just assume Sinbad was the lead.
 
It's Kazaam starring Shaquille O'Neal. This garbage is literally designed so somebody will "Shazzam sinbad" and see it never existed without remembering it was just called Kazaam and had Shaq.
 
It's not as bad as those folk that swear they've seen the one with the guy being his own father and then killing himself and then coming back. Think Robert Powell was in that one.


Seriously - really shows the malleability and fragility of human memory, makes one wonder how we can be sure of any historic telling of events before objective documentation was created.
 
If I wasn't surfing my phone I would try and find a link from Den of Geek talking about phantom films, and the gorier edit of Jaws 2 that is often spoken of, but never existed.
 
Humans have amazing brains they can make up all kinds of things and memory is at best malleable.

A few years ago I was involved in a REFORGER (an army exercise where units from USA were moved to reinforce Europe in case of Soviet invasion) and a mistake was made in regards to how much gasoline would be needed for x units for y days. I discussed this with two other fellows on line a year or so ago. We had not seen each other since '86. We found we all had radically different memories of that incident and who had done what, where, when and how. What was the truth? 'Z' screwed up and we fixed it but in our minds each of us had been the leader both on detecting it, coming up with a solution and implementation!
 
Hans said:
Humans have amazing brains they can make up all kinds of things and memory is at best malleable.

A few years ago I was involved in a REFORGER (an army exercise where units from USA were moved to reinforce Europe in case of Soviet invasion) and a mistake was made in regards to how much gasoline would be needed for x units for y days. I discussed this with two other fellows on line a year or so ago. We had not seen each other since '86. We found we all had radically different memories of that incident and who had done what, where, when and how. What was the truth? 'Z' screwed up and we fixed it but in our minds each of us had been the leader both on detecting it, coming up with a solution and implementation!
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Offtopic, but I love the acronym "REFORGER". It is a perfect confluence of bureaucratic necessity and poetic expression. It's an abbreviation for "REturn FORces to GERmany". But it also connotes the "reforging" of the NATO military might in Europe.

As I recall, the exercise was developed specifically to reassure NATO allies in Europe that the US could safely draw down its forces there, and still reinforce them in time to stop a Soviet invasion.

Which, when you think about it, would be an epic undertaking. The Soviet Union would be able to mobilize its troops directly by road and rail to the borders of Western Europe. The US would have to mobilize an equivalent counterforce, over the ocean.
 
Darat said:
It's not as bad as those folk that swear they've seen the one with the guy being his own father and then killing himself and then coming back. Think Robert Powell was in that one.


Seriously - really shows the malleability and fragility of human memory, makes one wonder how we can be sure of any historic telling of events before objective documentation was created.
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Sure, if you're a sensible person who doesn't regard your subjective memory as the infallible standard by which to measure reality. Which is why it's :bwall to argue with these folks- that they can never have any objective evidence for their particular CT isn't a problem for it, it's the whole point of it.
 
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theprestige said:
Offtopic, but I love the acronym "REFORGER". It is a perfect confluence of bureaucratic necessity and poetic expression. It's an abbreviation for "REturn FORces to GERmany". But it also connotes the "reforging" of the NATO military might in Europe.

As I recall, the exercise was developed specifically to reassure NATO allies in Europe that the US could safely draw down its forces there, and still reinforce them in time to stop a Soviet invasion.

Which, when you think about it, would be an epic undertaking. The Soviet Union would be able to mobilize its troops directly by road and rail to the borders of Western Europe. The US would have to mobilize an equivalent counterforce, over the ocean.
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Yeah it worked too we flew over and drew equipment from depots in Netherlands. The old problem of course if the Soviets had destroyed those or dumped persistent agent on them.

I'm not sure if they even still do them? Will go do some googling.
 
At first, I was admittedly fascinated by the Mandela Effect. While I*have never for a moment considered it to be anything other than people misremembering things, I find it quite interesting that so many people - reportedly thousands - would, not simply misremember something, but misremember it in the exact same way.

Nowadays though, after having visited the "subreddit" dedicated to this Effect, I just have to roll my eyes in disgust. I visited hoping to read of other, similar things to the Mandela/Berenstain situation,*with a particular mismemory of a some thing or event being exceedingly popular. But, you will find nothing of the like*being discussed there. All you'll find is single individuals swearing that when they were kids this thing was that way instead of the way it is now, a dozen other people saying "no it was never like*that, it was always this way", and the first individual*spazzing out at them about*obviously someone from*THIS reality would never remember it differently...it's just so pathetic and stupid, that this "Effect" about dimensional-travel that started out as basically a joke, has transformed into some kind of bizarre*anarchic cult.
 
Hans said:
Humans have amazing brains they can make up all kinds of things and memory is at best malleable.

A few years ago I was involved in a REFORGER (an army exercise where units from USA were moved to reinforce Europe in case of Soviet invasion) and a mistake was made in regards to how much gasoline would be needed for x units for y days. I discussed this with two other fellows on line a year or so ago. We had not seen each other since '86. We found we all had radically different memories of that incident and who had done what, where, when and how. What was the truth? 'Z' screwed up and we fixed it but in our minds each of us had been the leader both on detecting it, coming up with a solution and implementation!
Click to expand...

I've had plenty of experiences like this. It's a little disturbing when you know the other person is being sincere and isn't prone to exaggeration or embellishment.

There's no way to distinguish a false memory from a true one without external evidence. When I think of how many memories I have that might be utterly distorted it really does bother me.
 
Here's the weird thing. If you think about the different multiverse theories, the you that remembers it way x in the "right" universe and the you that remembers it way x in the"wrong" universe can be identical and so sharing the same consciousness. It would be an indistinguishable situation from being teleported from the right universe to the wrong universe.
 
Hans said:
Yeah it worked too we flew over and drew equipment from depots in Netherlands. The old problem of course if the Soviets had destroyed those or dumped persistent agent on them.

I'm not sure if they even still do them? Will go do some googling.
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Slightly off topic, but a while ago some Polish military revealed the Soviet plans in case of war.
Using the Netherlands would not really have worked, the Soviet plan for us amounted to : Nuke three major cities that are along the main roads to Germany, then send in Polish divisions to hold up the NATO / Die of radiation poisoning, while the Soviet army bypasses the country.

As someone who actually lived in that area at the time it was relevant, I am very happy that plan never went into action.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
Slightly off topic, but a while ago some Polish military revealed the Soviet plans in case of war.
Using the Netherlands would not really have worked, the Soviet plan for us amounted to : Nuke three major cities that are along the main roads to Germany, then send in Polish divisions to hold up the NATO / Die of radiation poisoning, while the Soviet army bypasses the country.

As someone who actually lived in that area at the time it was relevant, I am very happy that plan never went into action.
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If the plan was to let out the nukes then everybody lost. Attacks on a NATO city would have triggered a response against Soviet/Warsaw Pact cities especially those where the rail system went thru that would supply the WP forces.

It would have been rather nasty
 
Dark City*(1998)

John Murdoch: Here, let me ask you a question. You heard of a place called Shell Beach?

Inspector Frank Bumstead: Sure.

John Murdoch: Do you know how to get there?

Inspector Frank Bumstead: Yeah.

John Murdoch: Tell me.

Inspector Frank Bumstead: Right. You just... you go to the...

John Murdoch: Where? Where do you go?

Inspector Frank Bumstead: Just give me a second, will you...

John Murdoch: You can't remember, can you?




http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/quotes?item=qt0424932
 
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