Mandela effect: Evan Longoria saves reporter's life

[Edward Current]

This is a highly detailed example of the "Mandela effect" (a broadly shared false memory). Compared to other Mandela-effect examples, it doesn't get a lot of attention because it's mostly limited to sports fans, but it seems to be an extreme case.

Fifteen years ago or so, when viral videos really became a thing to be monetized, it became trendy for companies to create stealth advertisements not explicitly linked to a brand. Some of these videos were very convincing fakes. One of these was (as I understand it) created by Gillette/Proctor & Gamble. It depicted baseball star Evan Longoria doing an interview with a reporter on the foul line during what appears to be for some reason a post-game batting practice with no protective cage. A distant batter hits a ball that heads straight for the reporter. The seemingly superhuman Longoria senses the approaching ball and unflinchingly catches it bare-handed to prevent her from getting hit, seemingly saving her life:

Fast-forward ten years or so, and people very clearly remember that the reporter was not the woman in the video, but a blonde woman. From YouTube comments:

Some remember that it was shot during the day, which is when batting practice normally happens, and some remember a different uniform. Some even claim that the reporter was specifically Emily Austin, who is blonde. From Reddit:

Indeed, the video that people remember is nowhere to be found.

I'm always amused how many folks' first instinct with the Mandela effect is to externalize the error: I am not misremembering. I know what I saw — and the only possible explanations are "a glitch in the matrix," a conspiracy to fool everyone, or "it's supernatural."

In the case of video, though, YouTube doesn't lie. There are numerous examples of the clip uploaded 13 years ago, and none with a blonde reporter. Some claim that the video was edited years later, but unless Proctor & Gamble has YouTube-editing capabilities that I don't have, I don't think that's possible.

(Opinion/speculation follows)

I am fascinated by this case — how for so many people, the Black reporter was White. I think there's a lot going on here psychologically. There exists a strong archetype of the "hero" saving the "damsel in distress," and in our culture, they are both White and the damsel is often blonde. From Google images:

I think these are the steps of what happens:
1. The viewer watches the original video, and is shocked by Longoria's feat. This produces a strong emotional response — thus it is likely to be remembered years later. But the emotional response is tied to Longoria, not to the reporter.
2. Years may pass without the memory being recalled or reinforced.
3. If and when the memory is recalled, the viewer remembers the catch and fills in other details that aren't remembered, to create a full picture. Archetypes and stereotypes from culture inform the embellished portion. The recollection may happen subconsciously or casually, for example when the person hears Evan Longoria's name.
4. When the original video is viewed again, there is sharp cognitive dissonance between the original video and the memory.

With the Mandela effect, I am always struck by three things:
1. Some people's vehement, total refusal to accept their memory's fallibility. They will fight you over a memory as trivial as this. They know what they saw!
2. The similarities between the Mandela effect and UFO recollections. Even though one's memory may have been embellished, with culturally informed details filled in, years after a UFO experience, they know what they saw and they will fight you over it.
3. Pretty much everyone experiences the Mandela effect to some degree, and often in the same ways, demonstrating how remarkably similar the brain's error modes are from individual to individual. I wish, before I learned of this example, that someone had asked me to describe the scene in the Longoria catch video. I suspect I would have remembered a White reporter with blonde hair.

 

[captancourgette]

I have seen that video before (I think, either that or one exactly the same premise where the guy catches the ball as its about to hit the reporter), though I don't remember if the reporter was black or white or TBH if they were female or not.

Personally I think Mandela effect is totally bogus, esp WRT Mandela, yes I know many people don't watch the news but come on Mandela after his release from prison was easily one of the top 5 most famous people in the world for some years, it seemed like everyone had to have a photo op with him from the Pope & Saint Bono down to 3rd rate soap opera stars.
Though I will share an anecdote (this year I'm re-watching all the bond films for the first time, currently up to Living daylights)
Anyways some years ago (maybe 5 years ago), me and my GF were watching a video about the Mandela Effect on youtube I think. They mentioned 'Moonraker' I turned to my GF and said I've seen that film but the only thing I remember from the film was when the pigtailed girl smiled at jaws and she has braces on her teeth and then Jaws smiles back and shows his metal teeth. 10 seconds later in the video they mention this exact scene and say many ppl mistakenly thought she had braces on. I was floored. I swear I hadn't heard about the 'moonraker' mandela effect before (*), So I'm not sure why this was the only part of the film I had remembered. I hadn't seen the film since the 80s

(*)But I must of, as why else would I only remember that one piece that never took place.

https://www.debunkingmandelaeffects.com/dolly-has-braces/ <- some more info about it

 

[jarlrmai]

My favorite Mandela effect is one that bridges cryptozoology with the idea of false shared memories

The missing Thunderbird photograph.

https://www.curiousarchive.com/the-tombstone-thunderbird-photograph-and-the-mandela-effect/

 

[Edward Current]

Though I will share an anecdote (this year I'm re-watching all the bond films for the first time, currently up to Living daylights)
Anyways some years ago (maybe 5 years ago), me and my GF were watching a video about the Mandela Effect on youtube I think. They mentioned 'Moonraker' I turned to my GF and said I've seen that film but the only thing I remember from the film was when the pigtailed girl smiled at jaws and she has braces on her teeth and then Jaws smiles back and shows his metal teeth. 10 seconds later in the video they mention this exact scene and say many ppl mistakenly thought she had braces on. I was floored. I swear I hadn't heard about the 'moonraker' mandela effect before (*), So I'm not sure why this was the only part of the film I had remembered.

That's a great one. Me too — I watched all of those '70s Bond films when they came out. I know what I saw!

My theory there is that the screenwriters missed an opportunity for a better sight gag, but we the audience subconsciously "got" the nonexistent joke, regardless. The actual joke in the film is that not until Jaws smiles does Dolly realize he has metal teeth — but at the same time, she very much looks like a character who'd stereotypically be given braces. So, we put those things together and remember a gag that was funnier than the intended one. It's similar to the Longoria example in that the thing that initially registers with us is Jaws smiling, not Dolly; her details have to get filled in later.

If you interviewed folks coming out of the theater, they might have described her as wearing braces, even then.

 

[Giddierone]

https://www.curiousarchive.com/the-tombstone-thunderbird-photograph-and-the-mandela-effect/

Paranormal researcher Fiona Broome coined the term in 2010

The ironic thing is that "The Mandela Effect" was not "coined" in 2010, but rather repurposed into a new collective memory about...collective memory illusions. It was a common phrase, used to describe Nelson Mandela's political and cultural effect. For example Jack Straw refers to "the "Mandela" Effect" in a Guardian article about the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, 14 Dec, 1999.
"The Mandela effect" is also used elsewhere in the 1990s to more broadly describe an inspirational mythologised (?) political figure, it's use being somewhat like Beatlemania.

Source: Evening Standard, 1989.

Source: The Independent, 28 Jan, 1990.

Source: Detroit Free Press, 1 Jul, 1990.

 

[NorCal Dave]

If you interviewed folks coming out of the theater, they might have described her as wearing braces, even then.

Now add the next layer. When @captancourgette mentioned the Moonraker incident, my first reaction was "did she have braces"? Followed by "I'm not sure" then followed by a now primed memory of her with braces. Even if I had remembered her without braces, it's the braces memory that's now stuck in my head.

Some will fight with an "I know what I saw" but I think there's an equal chance what they think they saw is influenced by others. How many people really remembered a blond reporter vs how many remember a blond reporter after others said she was blond? I think this is especially true in the UFO world.

 

[FatPhil]

Paranormal researcher Fiona Broome coined the term in 2010

The ironic thing is that "The Mandela Effect" was not "coined" in 2010, but rather repurposed into a new collective memory about...collective memory illusions. It was a common phrase, used to describe Nelson Mandela's political and cultural effect. For example Jack Straw refers to "the "Mandela" Effect" in a Guardian article about the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, 14 Dec, 1999.
"The Mandela effect" is also used elsewhere in the 1990s to more broadly describe an inspirational mythologised (?) political figure, it's use being somewhat like Beatlemania.

But "coining" is the association of a word or phrase with a particular meaning. The earlier use of that word or phrase with different meanings does not affect the validity/status of the later purported coinage.

 

[Giddierone]

Of course you're right @FatPhil, but the phrase was repurposed. I'd felt sure i'd heard it prior to 2010 (hunch confirmed) and I found it interesting that its new meaning is now, perhaps, more well known than any of its previous ones.

 

[Edward Current]

Some will fight with an "I know what I saw" but I think there's an equal chance what they think they saw is influenced by others. How many people really remembered a blond reporter vs how many remember a blond reporter after others said she was blond? I think this is especially true in the UFO world.

Very true! A great Mandela-effect example that demonstrates this is "Mirror mirror on the wall." In the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the Evil Queen says, "Magic mirror on the wall" — but somehow that became "Mirror mirror" in pop culture. And 87 years later, everyone "remembers" the character saying "mirror mirror." But they're just remembering other people saying that. The line in the film isn't particularly memorable, unlike the Longoria catch or (less so) Jaws smiling at Dolly.

Perhaps there's a "Type 1 Mandela" where people do independently misremember an original source in similar ways, and a "Type 2 Mandela" where people remember other people's false memories. Perhaps some or all examples start out as Type 1 Mandelas and then evolve into Type 2 Mandelas as the false memory takes cultural hold.

 

[Giddierone]

"Magic mirror on the wall" — but somehow that became "Mirror mirror" in pop culture

But it actually is "Mirror, Mirror" in nearly all books/prints of the story, which is what I think most people correctly remember the Queen saying to her Magic Mirror. In other words I think people remember the story better than they do the Disney film adaptation.

 

[JMartJr]

But it actually is "Mirror, Mirror" in nearly all books/prints of the story, which is what I think most people correctly remember the Queen saying to her Magic Mirror. In other words I think people remember the story better than they do the Disney film adaptation.

Recall that the movie would have been seen once or twice at multi-year intervals, at most, in the years before VHS made it common to own movies and rewatch as many times as you want. So as the phrase was spreading as a cultural meme, people would have access to the books and such. Owning a book was common, as much as owning other media is now! The movie made the story more popular in the culture, which just meant more people reading the books to their kids every night, and them reading the book version of the phrase, setting it in the culture.

 

[Ann K]

Recall that the movie would have been seen once or twice at multi-year intervals, at most, in the years before VHS made it common to own movies and rewatch as many times as you want. So as the phrase was spreading as a cultural meme, people would have access to the books and such. Owning a book was common, as much as owning other media is now! The movie made the story more popular in the culture, which just meant more people reading the books to their kids every night, and them reading the book version of the phrase, setting it in the culture.

The Brothers Grimm first published it in 1812. I don't remember reading the story, although I'm not sure if it was read to me. Rather, it was TOLD to me, like any good bedtime story. The details many have varied a bit in the telling, but the phrase "mirror, mirror" was always part of it.

Incidentally, I find (Wikipedia) that the Grimms did not name the dwarves, and we have to thank Walt Disney for Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc. No, I didn't have to look up their names: I'd have much more room for matters of importance if I didn't have my mind full of trivia!

OT: My daughter bought Grimm's Fairy Tales for her Turkish roommate in college, when she realized that she had to explain so many cultural tales and phrases to someone who did not grow up with the stories.

 

[Edward Current]

But it actually is "Mirror, Mirror" in nearly all books/prints of the story, which is what I think most people correctly remember the Queen saying to her Magic Mirror. In other words I think people remember the story better than they do the Disney film adaptation.

I did not know this. The phrase was already part of the cultural consciousness before the movie came out, and it has stuck. (I would have expected the source material to have the more obscure wording — kind of like how the first broadly published version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" names one of the reindeer as Donder, rather than the more currently known Donner.)

 

[JMartJr]

the first broadly published version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" names one of the reindeer as Donder, rather than the more currently known Donner.)

Donder and Blitzen = Thunder and Lightning, btw. The "change" to Donner seems likely to show up as a claimed Mandela Effect if it has not already.

 

[FatPhil]

Of course you're right @FatPhil, but the phrase was repurposed. I'd felt sure i'd heard it prior to 2010 (hunch confirmed) and I found it interesting that its new meaning is now, perhaps, more well known than any of its previous ones.

Alas the effect didn't even need a name, it was already called the Bugs Bunny Effect by those familiar with Pickrell & Loftus' research into false memories:

June 11, 2001
'I tawt I taw' a bunny wabbit at Disneyland; New evidence shows false memories can be created

About one-third of the people who were exposed to a fake print advertisement that described a visit to Disneyland and how they met and shook hands with Bugs Bunny later said they remembered or knew the event happened to them.

https://www.washington.edu/news/200...evidence-shows-false-memories-can-be-created/

My false memory is that I learnt about that at the turn of the 90s, when I inherited all my sister's university textbooks on psychology, but clearly that's impossible.

For more on the real-world relevance of Loftus' work, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/...2---vol-18/seeing-bugs-bunny-at-disney-world/ covers the "eye witness unreliablity" facet well. However, if you just want an alien-abduction twist, there's some here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/you-remember-it-well/ (alas, the space aliens are from a different researcher presenting his work at the same conference). For a full review of the field as it was in 2005, there's Loftus & Bernstein /Rich False Memories: The Royal Road to Success/, available here: https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...852cab/1609397098778/loft_bern-rich-fm051.pdf

 

[FatPhil]

Donder and Blitzen = Thunder and Lightning, btw. The "change" to Donner seems likely to show up as a claimed Mandela Effect if it has not already.

You seem to be overlooking the change from "Dunder and Blixem" to "Donder and Blitzen". Not that that change was unique, the poem's evolved a lot over time:

The presence of so many "quirks" gave subsequent editors countless opportunities to "fix" the poem. The most important of these fixes was the extensively edited broadsheet version from about 1830, published by the very same Norman Tuttle who had first published the poem. Only with this version, Tuttle really let his blue editing pencil loose.

Counting each line of the reindeer names as only 1 difference, there are FIFTY-FIVE editing differences between the poem as originally published by Tuttle in 1823, and the poem extensively edited by Tuttle around 1830.

-- http://iment.com/maida//familytree/henry/xmas/poemvariants/troysentinel1823.htm

There's additional mystery surrounding that poem far deeper than the reindeers' names - who wrote it:

Stories passed down the line of Henry Livingston's children tell of the children hearing the poem read to them by Henry almost twenty years before the poem's publication. Those children, in turn, read the poem to their children as the work of their grandfather.

As to a possible path between the Livingston and Moore households, Livingson family stories talk of a governess visiting with the Livingstons before stopping off at the Clement Moore household on her way down south to work. There are no specific names attached to this story, but it is interesting to look at Henry's next door neighbors, John Moore and his wife, Judith Newcomb Livingston Moore.

Judith was Henry's first cousin, while John's brother was married to Clement Moore's aunt. Keep in mind that Henry is of Clement Moore's FATHER'S generation, not Clement Moore's.

-- Ibid.

 

[Scaramanga]

Fast-forward ten years or so, and people very clearly remember that the reporter was not the woman in the video, but a blonde woman. From YouTube comments:

I think they are confusing it with another, very similar, type video. I never saw the original video...but I do remember a very similar video a few years back where there's actually two balls involved and there's the illusion that the ball caught is the one hit by a player. The latter case did have a blonde reporter. I only vaguely remember it, cant find it off-hand.....the only thing I remember clearly is that the whole thing being just one ball was an illusion. It may even have been a fake re-creation of the original that went viral. But yes....I remember the 'blonde reporter' version of it. I definitely saw it.

( EDIT...just to clarify : In the original you can see the ball travelling all the way from the player's bat to the guy's hand. You never lose sight of it. In the version I saw, you do lose sight of the ball...but at that exact moment another ball comes in from the right. It looks like it is the same ball but watching a few times shows it isn't. That's the version of the thing I remember. It may be an entirely unrelated event, or a bad attempt at copying it. Will have to try and find it on Youtube....but yes there definitely was such a video ).

 

[Giddierone]

I did not know this. The phrase was already part of the cultural consciousness before the movie came out, and it has stuck. (I would have expected the source material to have the more obscure wording — kind of like how the first broadly published version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" names one of the reindeer as Donder, rather than the more currently known Donner.)

Just to return to this for a moment.

There's a few different versions/translations, a couple of which don't even use the word "Mirror".
This one from Snowdrop.

She had a fairy looking-glass, to which she used to go, and then she would gaze upon herself in it, and say:
'Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest, tell me, who?'
And the glass had always answered:
'Thou, queen, art the fairest in all the land.'

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2591/pg2591-images.html#link2H_4_0064
Snowdrop

Then there's:

Source:
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales
https://archive.org/details/grimmscompletefa00brot/page/329/mode/1up?q=heart+ate

Then the more familiar "Mirror, Mirror" phrase - which I think most people remember -
in the 1923 edition of Snowdrop, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fairy_Tales_of_the_Brothers_Grimm_(Rackham)/Snowdrop

This form had also appeared in Newspapers as early as 1873.

Source:
The Greenville Journal
Greenville, Ohio · Thursday, March 20, 1873

---

A slight tangent but there's another Celtic fairy tale 'Gold Tree and Silver Tree' where the baddie consults a trout in a pond/well rather than a magic mirror. Not sure if there's some catchy dialouge in that one though....
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-Tree_and_Silver-Tree

 

[JMartJr]

You seem to be overlooking the change from "Dunder and Blixem"

Not so much "overlooked" as "was totally unaware of!" Thanks!

 

[jarlrmai]

I think they are confusing it with another, very similar, type video. I never saw the original video...but I do remember a very similar video a few years back where there's actually two balls involved and there's the illusion that the ball caught is the one hit by a player. The latter case did have a blonde reporter. I only vaguely remember it, cant find it off-hand.....the only thing I remember clearly is that the whole thing being just one ball was an illusion. It may even have been a fake re-creation of the original that went viral. But yes....I remember the 'blonde reporter' version of it. I definitely saw it.

( EDIT...just to clarify : In the original you can see the ball travelling all the way from the player's bat to the guy's hand. You never lose sight of it. In the version I saw, you do lose sight of the ball...but at that exact moment another ball comes in from the right. It looks like it is the same ball but watching a few times shows it isn't. That's the version of the thing I remember. It may be an entirely unrelated event, or a bad attempt at copying it. Will have to try and find it on Youtube....but yes there definitely was such a video ).

Dude you might literally have the Mandela effect about this video, what you just said is classic.

 

[Scaramanga]

Dude you might literally have the Mandela effect about this video, what you just said is classic.

Not really. I'm not mis-remembering the original, as I never saw the original. I'm remembering a very similar event.

 

[jarlrmai]

Not really. I'm not mis-remembering the original, as I never saw the original. I'm remembering a very similar event.

Or you are mistakenly remembering this video and have made up the additional details subconsciously.. That's the whole thing with the Mandela effect. I guess if you come up with the actual video that would be interesting as it would be a reference for why others might have false memories about this video, as they are conflating both of them.

 

[Edward Current]

Not really. I'm not mis-remembering the original, as I never saw the original. I'm remembering a very similar event.

In preparing the top post I went through several discussions about this video on YouTube and Reddit, and I also did searches for videos with Emily Austen. Many people speculated there was a different video with a blonde woman, but it seems like a link should have turned up via the crowdsourcing. I'd love to see it, like I'd love to meet aliens.

What did turn up was a goof where a Comedy Central show replaced the reporter with comedian Norm Macdonald:

The closest thing I could find to the described video was this blonde reporter (which I think is Emily Austen) getting doused after a game:

 

[Scaramanga]

Many people speculated there was a different video with a blonde woman, but it seems like a link should have turned up via the crowdsourcing. I'd love to see it, like I'd love to meet aliens.

There is definitely a similar event....though I am not entirely sure it was baseball. May have been cricket or some other such sport. These sort of events are not uncommon. This is not the one, but it does show its not infrequent....


Source: https://youtu.be/CQZMzAgCaJ8

 

[Edward Current]

There is definitely a similar event....though I am not entirely sure it was baseball. May have been cricket or some other such sport. These sort of events are not uncommon. This is not the one, but it does show its not infrequent....

One knows what one saw!

 

[mmtmn]

By the words of no one.

There is a way to pull this off. Film actors separately. One video goes as unlisted or private while the other isn't, than, switch it up - Add some 100k in google ads and watch the world re-viral the video 10+ years later.

Maybe you can create a Mandela effect this way, but, there is a mistake. People ripped this video and posted on meme websites.

I'm not saying there is a intentional attempt at a "Mandela effect", but it would be one hell of a marketing scheme. And yes, human memories are faulty.


Let me take a quick look to see if I can find it somewhere.

No luck so far, but I might've found the date, which helps with the wayback machine (internet archive)

By all means, so far, it really seems like this was the real deal. There was no white, blond woman. and this is legit. Even looked at meme websites with gif forms of this video. Or at least that's what it seems so far. Really close to just agreeing with the original post about this.

I couldn't find any gifs of this video, so I'm just going to agree with this last image. Reminds me a bit of the dress that "changes color", and the type of stuff that can trick the big ol' biochemical computer we call central nervous system.

 

[Mendel]

Then there's:

Source:
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales
https://archive.org/details/grimmscompletefa00brot/page/329/mode/1up?q=heart+ate

The brothers Grimm were German language researchers, and their German telling of Schneewittchen goes like this:

Article:

"Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?"

Source: https://www.goethe.de/lrn/prj/mlg/mad/gri/de9114368.htm

("Spieglein" means a small mirror, so "mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest (female) in the land?")
This rhyme is repeated six timed throughout the tale, and is the memorable lynchpin of the story in their telling. Any translation that does not double up the "mirror" takes considerable liberties.

Before the advent of podcasts, there were audio cassettes given to children, and records played, some of them recordings of fairy tales as audio-book or drama.

(1967)

 

[Mendel]

You seem to be overlooking the change from "Dunder and Blixem" to "Donder and Blitzen".

I love this because this calls to mind misheard lyrics.
"Donnern und Blitzen" (to thunder and flash) is a standing phrase in German, so anyone familiar with that language is likely to mis-hear "Dunder and Blixem" as "Donner and Blitzen".

Now we're all aware that we regularly mishear language, as language is often used in a dialogue situation, where the misunderstandings from misheard language can quickly become apparent. But pop songs are one-way communication, so misheard lyrics can go undetected for years. Examples abound on kissthisguy.com, the site being named after "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" in Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze.

What happens is that our brains don't record information, but rather insert it into an existing network of knowledge, and the "donnern and blitzen" node replaces the "Dunder and Blitzem" information to the point that when our brain retrieves the poem, that's what it recalls. It's a very efficient way of storing information that allows leveraging similar information to produce knowledge, but it's anything but a faithful recording.

It stands to reason that similar processes occur when we store and retrieve visual information. But it rarely becomes apparent when we've "mis-seen" something. Situations where is routinely does are with police taking witness statements. We may have encountered this on Metabunk with witnesses drawing UFOs and aliens, e.g. in the Ariel School case.

That's at the heart of these Mandela Effect examples: something familiar and pre-existing in our mental knowledge network has ursurped the place of the actual information, which has been lost, leaving us convinced that we saw something we never did.

 

[JMartJr]

That's at the heart of these Mandela Effect examples: something familiar and pre-existing in our mental knowledge network has ursurped the place of the actual information, which has been lost, leaving us convinced that we saw something we never did.

Add to that, we are all running the same make and model brains prone to the same "glitches," and you have the answer to the question, "Why do so many people (mis)remember this (usually trivial) detail the same way, if it wasn't real?"

Pile on top of that how many people first hear of a Mandela Effect such as "Dolly Had Braces!!!" from somebody pushing the idea, and since most of us do not watch "Moonraker" all that frequently and actually don't have super-strong memories about the movie, the meme can spread itself pretty easily.

 

[Edward Current]

No luck so far, but I might've found the date, which helps with the wayback machine (internet archive)

This is the original upload, from May 6, 2011 (the channel was started two days earlier, and it's the only video on the channel, with 10 million views):
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMujgAAyH-I

The video description reads, "Tampa Bay Ray and Gillette Young Gun Evan Longoria makes a crazy bare hand catch right before it hits a reporter."

The earliest "the reporter was blonde" comment that I could find is from 6 years ago; at that time, the vast majority of comments were debating whether the video is real. (Longoria admitted in a 2021 podcast that it was fake.) The "blonde reporter" comments start taking over about 4 years ago. From the past year, something like two-thirds of the comments are about the reporter. There is also a marked uptick in the number of comments, suggesting that people are re-viewing the video because it is now known for the Mandela effect. So this video gives us a good idea of how a Mandela effect evolves over time.

I am amazed that no one remembers the reporter being a brunette or redheaded woman. Always blonde.

I am equally amazed that no one says, "You're all wrong — I remember her being the Black woman in the video."

 

[Alexandria Nick]

Pile on top of that how many people first hear of a Mandela Effect such as "Dolly Had Braces!!!" from somebody pushing the idea, and since most of us do not watch "Moonraker" all that frequently and actually don't have super-strong memories about the movie, the meme can spread itself pretty easily.

I know I've seen Moonraker an unhealthy number of times and I'd thought she had braces too. That's the only one of all these things that has confounded me.

 

[RTM]

Has anyone here seen the movie The Prestige? After I watched it a second time, there was part of a scene that I was convinced was missing and I was sure I had seen it the first time I watched it. I will put the below in spoilers in case anyone hasn't seen it as I think it's worth watching (and the book it's based on is also very good).

Spoiler: movie spoilers

Anyway the film is about two magicians in the Victorian era who get into a feud and they are constantly trying to one up each other, even to the point of sabotage. One of the magicians comes up with a trick called the transported man; he has two cabinets on stage and he stands in front of one and he bounces a small rubber ball and walks into one of the cabinets and emerges from the other to catch the bouncing ball. When watching it a second time the screen went dark and you don't see him emerge from the second one to catch the ball, but I was convinced I seen him do that the first time. Not sure is that is a good example of faulty memory or good suggestive film making.

 

[Ann K]

Has anyone here seen the movie The Prestige? After I watched it a second time, there was part of a scene that I was convinced was missing and I was sure I had seen it the first time I watched it.

Many years ago when the world and I were both young, I saw a movie (with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), and then saw it a second time when it showed up as half of a double feature at the drive-in. My sister and I simultaneously spoke up, saying something like "Where's that other scene?" as the film ended rather awkwardly. It's not unheard of that a movie will get cropped or some scenes omitted at a later release, perhaps because of local blue laws. So it can be very hard to figure out how much is "Mandela effect" and how much is a change in the movie itself. Maybe your memory was just fine!

 

[Todd Feinman]

I thought for years there was a scene in Groundhog Day where Murray (as Phil Connors), wakes up and shoots himself ---and then wakes up again. Should have been in film.

 

[Ann K]

I thought for years there was a scene in Groundhog Day where Murray (as Phil Connors), wakes up and shoots himself ---and then wakes up again. Should have been in film.

From Wikipedia:

Phil gradually becomes depressed and desperate for a way to escape the loop. He commits suicide in a variety of ways, even kidnapping Punxsutawney Phil and driving them both off a cliff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)

Sorry, their plot summation doesn't elaborate on the ways he attempts suicide. But doing it with a gun is exactly the kind of scene that may have been cut, perhaps to get a different rating for the film.

 

[Giddierone]

And those film trailers that have scenes or dialogue that don't occur in the actual movie - they seem designed to befuddle us.

 

[Scaramanga]

I think it's really a question of how much attention people were paying when they saw something, and the additional factor of how many times they have seen it since. Ask most Brits what colour dress Mrs Thatcher was wearing when she entered Downing Street and I'd bet 99% will correctly say blue. Most people have seen it multiple times. Ask the same question about when she left Downing Street....well, I had to look it up as I'd imagine it would also have been blue. In fact it was red. It was an event I only ever saw once and wasn't really paying that much attention.

 

[jarlrmai]

If I'd never seen it and someone asked me what colour Thatcher was wearing at some event, I'd guess blue because that's the colour associated with the conservative party..

 

[FatPhil]

If I'd never seen it and someone asked me what colour Thatcher was wearing at some event, I'd guess blue because that's the colour associated with the conservative party..

I'm colour-deficient, but my recollection is that she didn't wear the primary colours that often. She was more into the beiges, greys/monochromes and occasionally a black-and-white dog-tooth check.

Those are the neutral recollections, the rest of them aren't printable here.

 

[John J.]

Don't know if it counts as an example of the Mandela effect, but some UK Metabunkers of a certain age might remember Labour leader Michael Foot wearing a donkey jacket (a work coat associated with manual laborers in 20th century Britain) at the 1981 Remembrance Sunday ceremony.

Many British people remember this, and it was widely picked up and commented on by the media (and Foot's critics- including within his own party). Some time ago had an online discussion with a couple of guys who remembered it vividly, they were still outraged by Foot's disrespect. But it never happened.

Donkey jackets traditionally were made from a heavy dark wool, with a leather yoke to withstand wear while carrying loads on the shoulder; later types often had a PVC yoke, sometimes in Hi-Viz colours for road workers etc.

Foot actually wore a coat bought for him by his wife from the famous Harrods department store.
It's been described as a pea coat and a short overcoat.

He didn't look very smart. It was baggy on Foot, and a greyish-green colour; the prevailing etiquette would suggest black, dark grey or dark navy for men not in military uniform. And he could've done up the buttons!
This was just before the day that someone in Foot's position would have advisors and spin doctors who might give better advice on his image than his wife did.

But he didn't wear a donkey jacket, and though I think his coat was a bloody awful choice, he didn't mean any disrespect
(and I was no fan of his politics).

Because of its infamy, Foot's coat is now on display at the People's History Museum in Nottingham.
In this 3 minute 33 sec film, Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History at the University of Nottingham discusses it and the concept of "fake news".
https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/steven-fielding-highlights-five-objects-in-a-series-of-films-for-phm/