What is the Mandela effect?

The term was coined around 2009 by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome, who found that many people remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, although he was released in 1990 and died in 2013. Famous examples include the belief that the Monopoly man wears a monocle, that the children’s books are called “Berenstein Bears” rather than Berenstain, and that Darth Vader says “Luke, I am your father” instead of “No, I am your father”. Psychologists explain it through ordinary memory errors: our brains reconstruct memories and fill gaps with what seems likely. A 2022 study found some visual false memories are shared consistently across people.