Merged The MANDELA Effect.

[Spektator]

My memory of one scene in the original Star Wars is that as the stormtroopers chased Han and Chewbacca through a corridor of the Death Star, a stormtrooper yelled, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" And the doors started to close, Han and Chewie leaped through, and instantly the stormtrooper shouted, "Open the blast doors!"

In fact, I remember saying to someone who went to the theater with me, "They got that line from the Bugs Bunny cartoon Knighty Knight Bugs!"

Then in later reissues...the line was gone. Did I imagine it? Was it real or Memorex - er, faux memory? I've had false memories before. I still recall riding on a float in our city's Christmas parade and tossing candy canes to the kids in the crowd. But my mother and older sister have told me that never happened. My sister (ten years older) rode in the parade as one of the high school cheerleading team. I was but five and watched the parade. My sister even had a photo clipped from the local paper that showed her and the other cheerleaders on the float.

So clearly did I remember doing that, though, that I undertook some research. The next year's parade was canceled because of weather. The year after I had measles and couldn't go to the parade. And I have clearer memories of later years, when it didn't happen. Weird.

 

[alfaniner]

My memory of one scene in the original Star Wars is that as the stormtroopers chased Han and Chewbacca through a corridor of the Death Star, a stormtrooper yelled, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" And the doors started to close, Han and Chewie leaped through, and instantly the stormtrooper shouted, "Open the blast doors!"

In fact, I remember saying to someone who went to the theater with me, "They got that line from the Bugs Bunny cartoon Knighty Knight Bugs!"

Then in later reissues...the line was gone. Did I imagine it? Was it real or Memorex - er, faux memory? I've had false memories before. I still recall riding on a float in our city's Christmas parade and tossing candy canes to the kids in the crowd. But my mother and older sister have told me that never happened. My sister (ten years older) rode in the parade as one of the high school cheerleading team. I was but five and watched the parade. My sister even had a photo clipped from the local paper that showed her and the other cheerleaders on the float.

So clearly did I remember doing that, though, that I undertook some research. The next year's parade was canceled because of weather. The year after I had measles and couldn't go to the parade. And I have clearer memories of later years, when it didn't happen. Weird.

There were definitely different sound mixes for different releases. One I recall is when Luke and Leia stumble upon the Death Star chasm and Luke says "I think we took a wrong turn!" and there are several echoes of "wrong turn... wrong turn..." I didn't hear the echoes later on in some viewings. I don't doubt there were differences in sound presentation between a local neighborhood theater and the massive screen/sound theaters.

 

[Cat Not Included]

My memory of one scene in the original Star Wars is that as the stormtroopers chased Han and Chewbacca through a corridor of the Death Star, a stormtrooper yelled, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" And the doors started to close, Han and Chewie leaped through, and instantly the stormtrooper shouted, "Open the blast doors!"

In fact, I remember saying to someone who went to the theater with me, "They got that line from the Bugs Bunny cartoon Knighty Knight Bugs!"

Then in later reissues...the line was gone. Did I imagine it? Was it real or Memorex - er, faux memory?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlyPGKnCg_U

 

[Cat Not Included]

I guess this is sort of related. One year my partner and I were on vacation and hiked to a really neat "beach" that was all smooth, round pebbles. We really liked it, though wished we had better shoes for it.

So next year when we were there again we went back - and the beach was all now sand! We asked a few locals and nobody had any idea what we were talking about; they didn't remember the pebble beach.

I'm guessing they hauled in sand and perhaps it wasn't pebbles very long? We know we didn't imagine it - we've got plenty of photos. And we're pretty sure reality didn't shift. But its gets really puzzling why we can't find any photos online of the beach with pebbles or why nobody else seemed to notice the pebble period!

 

[ahhell]

I guess this is sort of related. One year my partner and I were on vacation and hiked to a really neat "beach" that was all smooth, round pebbles. We really liked it, though wished we had better shoes for it.

So next year when we were there again we went back - and the beach was all now sand! We asked a few locals and nobody had any idea what we were talking about; they didn't remember the pebble beach.

I'm guessing they hauled in sand and perhaps it wasn't pebbles very long? We know we didn't imagine it - we've got plenty of photos. And we're pretty sure reality didn't shift. But its gets really puzzling why we can't find any photos online of the beach with pebbles or why nobody else seemed to notice the pebble period!

I offer two scenerios. Some storm or something momentarily washout the sand revealing pebbles or washed in pebbles. Next storm the reverse happned. You remember the wrong beach? Its actually a beach 30 minutes up the coast?

 

[Cat Not Included]

I offer two scenerios. Some storm or something momentarily washout the sand revealing pebbles or washed in pebbles. Next storm the reverse happned. You remember the wrong beach? Its actually a beach 30 minutes up the coast?

It was definitely the right beach! We took LOTS of pictures
Can a beach actually change that much that fast? I have no idea!

 

[Thermal]

It was definitely the right beach! We took LOTS of pictures
Can a beach actually change that much that fast? I have no idea!

I live on a NJ barrier island, and can attest to literal overnight radical geography rearrangement. Never heard of exactly what you describe, but I've seen good Nor'Easters take 40 feet of beach away completely in one storm, then give it back in another.

 

[novaphile]

It was definitely the right beach! We took LOTS of pictures
Can a beach actually change that much that fast? I have no idea!

Sand moves around a lot.

It's a major issue where I live, with trucks and pipelines moving sand from places where it is building up back to beaches where it has been washed away.

Your first explanation makes perfect sense to me.

Smooth round pebbles that are normally covered with a variable layer of sand.

 

[Cat Not Included]

I live on a NJ barrier island, and can attest to literal overnight radical geography rearrangement. Never heard of exactly what you describe, but I've seen good Nor'Easters take 40 feet of beach away completely in one storm, then give it back in another.

Very interesting (your response too novaphile!). I had no idea beaches could change that much. Cool.

 

[Thermal]

Very interesting (your response too novaphile!). I had no idea beaches could change that much. Cool.

Should probably have qualified that by noting that my beaches are sugar sand, no rock at all, so the coastline can move around literally as easily as a wave knocking over a sand castle. Hell, my whole island is really just a sandbar that got paved over.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Crap a good hurricane can redraw a coast line to a degree that you won't believe.

As Thermal alluded to there's like whole legit built up communities that are just on piles of sand that weren't there 50 or 60 years ago.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Lethal Weapon 2.

End of the movie. The evil South African diplomat has just shot Riggs and then he holds up his diplomatic credentials and sneers that he has diplomatic immunity, to which Murtaugh shoots him in the head and quips "It's just been revoked!" We all remember that scene in all its wonderful stupid cheesiness.

But I remember it differently.

I have a distinct and clear memory of the Diplomat holding his diplomatic passport, saying "Diplomatic Immunity!" and Murtaugh shooting THROUGH the diplomatic passport, leaving a clear hole in it, which then slumps down revealing the gunshot wound in the Diplomat's head, and then the Diplomate slowly slumps to the ground.

But if you watch the movie* the Diplomat is holding his diplomatic credentials far off to the side, well clear of his head and Murtaugh just shoots him in the head, the bullet not touching the diplomatic passport and he falls back very quickly after being shot.

I know the ending got reshoot (Riggs died in the original version) and it's POSSIBLE I saw an alternate take/shot of that scene somehow, but more likely it's a classic brainfart misremembering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDIF3XhXTT8

 

[dann]

Brian Stavely is on hand to tell us exactly what the Mandela Effect is, and to be honest it really is as basic as you might think.
Mandela Effect Expert Reveals All (SciManDan on YouTube, Dec 5, 2023 - 12:24 min)

I have had an experience akin to the Mandela effect:
The movie Grease is pretty old, 1978. I couple of months after I had watched it, some of my friends mentioned it and talked about Olivia Newton-John's Australian accent. I said that I hadn't noticed it at all and doubted that her accent was as pronounced as they claimed.

It was not an important point, but it still annoyed me, so I decided to watch it again, and, yes, they were right, and I didn't understand how I hadn't noticed it at all the first time.

I didn't occur to me what had happened until I visited friends in Hamburg a month later, and our conversation turned to what we'd done the last time I was there: I had watched Grease with them in a dubbed version: Everybody in the movie, including Olivia Newton-John, spoke German!

 

[gnome]

This is one of the reasons I follow things like that. There's something really enjoyable in actually learning what the cause of an anomalous memory is. When it's one of my own memories, it's outright sublime.

One that fascinates me is the supposed "Shazam" movie with Sinbad released roughly parallel to "Kazaam" with Shaq. So many people are sure they had their own copy of the movie and understood it to be distinct from the Shaq film.

Personally I think people were picking up on cues that would make such a movie seem likely, including just wondering "Kazaam? Wasn't it Shazaam?" when the movie first came out, but as well I think they are combining that with the memory of a different movie starring a wisecracking comedian and a couple of kids and possibly involving magic. I feel like if someone could work out what movie that was it would come together.

 

[Thermal]

This is one of the reasons I follow things like that. There's something really enjoyable in actually learning what the cause of an anomalous memory is.

One that fascinates me is the supposed "Shazam" movie with Sinbad released roughly parallel to "Kazaam" with Shaq. So many people are sure they had their own copy of the movie and understood it to be distinct from the Shaq film.

Personally I think as well as picking up on cues that would make such a movie seem likely, including just wondering "Kazaam? Wasn't it Shazaam?" when the movie first came out, but as well I think they are combining that with the memory of a different movie starring a wisecracking comedian and a couple of kids and possibly involving magic. I feel like if someone could work out what movie that was it would come together.

I remember seeing a coming attraction poster for the (apparently nonexistent Shazam movie) and thinking " oh Sinbad, like from the Arabian nights, that's funny. But wasn't Shazam that guy with the lightning bolt from Saturday morning cartoons?" Nether was the kind of thing you'd mix up with Shaq and Kazaam, with Shaq being an extremely high profile basketball star, and Sinbad a minor actor. Plus Kazaam sounds like a magicians incantation, not a vaguely recalled cartoon character. That's what makes it so weird to confuse the two. It seems more like a retrofit explanation.

 

[gnome]

I remember seeing a coming attraction poster for the (apparently nonexistent Shazam movie) and thinking " oh Sinbad, like from the Arabian nights, that's funny. But wasn't Shazam that guy with the lightning bolt from Saturday morning cartoons?" Nether was the kind of thing you'd mix up with Shaq and Kazaam, with Shaq being an extremely high profile basketball star, and Sinbad a minor actor. Plus Kazaam sounds like a magicians incantation, not a vaguely recalled cartoon character. That's what makes it so weird to confuse the two. It seems more like a retrofit explanation.

Supposedly the "Shazam" movie was, like "Kazaam", about a genie that some kids find. That was the point of commonality. If it had existed, it would be like other "paired" movies that were known to exist. Except it didn't exist. The resemblance of the name to the lightning bolt guy is a red herring (but also additional point of confusion).

My speculation is that there is a REAL movie or special or TV show episode, other than "Kazaam" that had at least some of those elements, that people are thinking of.

 

[Thermal]

Supposedly the "Shazam" movie was, like "Kazaam", about a genie that some kids find. That was the point of commonality. If it had existed, it would be like other "paired" movies that were known to exist. Except it didn't exist. The resemblance of the name to the lightning bolt guy is a red herring (but also additional point of confusion).

My speculation is that there is a REAL movie or special or TV show episode, other than "Kazaam" that had at least some of those elements, that people are thinking of.

Red herring? It's half the issue. The proposed conflation is about only two elements- the actor Sinbad and the title Shazam. Both were far less widely known than international basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neill and the common magician phrase Kazaam (more commonly Alakazam).

I mean, until this debunking theory was put forward, I had never heard of the Shaq movie. But I recall very clearly the Sinbad coming attraction poster. It's obviously faulty recollection, but it seems strange to substitute the well known image of Shaq with a fairly obscure actor (who I gather appeared on a show I had never seen), and for millions of people to substitute the same name of a pretty damn obscure cartoon character (not a well known one like Batman or Superman).

I'm inclined to think Sinbad got conflated in there because the movie theme was a genie, and well Sinbad was a figure from the Arabian Nights. Maybe Shazam was a lot more popular than I recall, for it to be in the minds of millions,but it's hardly a red herring when it's literally half the effect.

 

[gnome]

The effect is about two genie movies when there was one. Hardly anyone, even die hard believers that this movie exists, has suggested that the "Shazam" Sinbad movie had anything to do with the Marvel character Shazam.

 

[Thermal]

No, the effect is about one movie that did not exist. There is an attempted retrofit explanation for the misremembering, one that I think makes little to no sense.

"Shazam" has no other well known meaning that I recall, except as the cartoon. It would be intensely strange for millions to misremember a title as a word they had not really heard before.

 

[Spektator]

I didn't occur to me what had happened until I visited friends in Hamburg a month later, and our conversation turned to what we'd done the last time I was there: I had watched Grease with them in a dubbed version: Everybody in the movie, including Olivia Newton-John, spoke German!

"Sehr guten tag, mate!"