The Mandela Effect

Do you remember when Darth Vader said, "Luke, I am your father…?” What about the Monopoly Man and his monocle, or even the phrase “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” in Snow White? If you do, you're not alone. Astonishingly, Darth Vader never said this, the Monopoly Man has perfect vision, and the correct quote is 'magic mirror on the wall". In fact, it was this phenomenon that inspired Fiona Broome to coin the term "the Mandela Effect" in 2009, when she noticed that many people, like herself, swore that they remembered Nelson Mandela having died in prison in the 80s, yet Mr. Mandela was very much alive and there was no evidence that this had ever occurred. 

As this phenomenon gained notoriety, many more examples of shared “misremembered recollections” arose, causing many to start questioning what could cause such large-scale false recollections. Many scientists have written this phenomenon off as “pseudo-science”, claiming that this is due to faulty memory processing, where events that occur after the fact can cause distortions and interferences with the memory of the actual event. 

How is it, then, that we all remember certain things that supposedly never occurred? Can we really discount this and attribute this to “faulty memory” or is it possible that these disparities in ‘reality’ can be attributed to something else altogether? Gaia’s video offers an insightful perspective into this riveting phenomenon. Learn more below.