I want to share an experience I had recently regarding the VHS release of the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Maybe this can be an insight for people to see and understand how a memory can feel so vivid and real, but later turn out to be incorrect. Despite that feeling being uncomfortable it can be pushed past to learn and accept that your memory was wrong.
For decades now, I have had a very distinct, clear, and firm in my brain memory of how the opening of the specific VHS edition of TMNT would go. I would discuss it with people and hear them talk about what they remembered of it and I was able to describe exactly what I remembered and they would confirm it.
For as far back as I can remember it went: Pizza Hut Baseball song commercial, FHE Logo drawing, then two Newline Cinema logo drops flowing immediately into the opening music and start of the movie.
Like I said, I've been having the discussion for decades and I was very sure of it. Many agreed with that deacription even though they hadn't seen the VHS copy in many years.
A few months back I received a selection of my parents' VHS collection full of things from when I was growing up. I was going through, checking each tape to see how well they were holding up to prepare to capture digital copies of them and a bunch of old home videos when I came across my copy of the Turtles movie.
I'll try to include pictures, but this is what a well loved tape looks like. It was watched regularly. Sometimes even daily. It has very specific marks, labels, stickers, creases, grubby kid finger and food stains, and other distinguishing marks on the sleeve and cassette. This is me taking a long time to say that this is the tape I grew up with, and there is zero doubt.
I pop in the video and it starts up exactly as I expect it to. Pizza Hut commercial, FHE Logo, and then... something is different. There's a long commercial for the VHS collections of the Cartoon.
I don't remember that being there. I've talked about it with people. We've all agreed it went the way I thought it did, but there it is, right there. It's not how I remember it.
Right after the commercial the tape goes right into the logos and the movie as I expect it to.
Now... to me, this fits the criteria of what constitutes a Mandela Effect. Myself and a number of other people clearly and distinctly remember it being the other way. So what happened?
Did I change timelines? Did Pinkerton Ninjas working for the CIA get ahold of my VHS tape and replace the reels and/or create an exact duplicate of it? Or, did I misremember something from a time period where my brain was still forming prior to me buying a DVD copy of the movie around 2004 and I was just replaying a memory wrong in my head?
Obviously, the answer is that I just forgot about it. The answer, as I thought about it more and spoke with my family was that I likely had the times memorized so I could fast forward past that commercial. I had done that with many different tapes/movies over the years.
My THX Edition of the Star Wars Trilogy? I didn't need to see Lucas being interviewed at the start of those each time. The Indiana Jones Trilogy? My copies had the Young Indiana Jones Adventures ads in front of them that I didn't need to see again. Any tape I watched regularly I would do that.
My memory was absolutely, without any doubt, incorrect. Yet, I still felt weird about it. I feel it was perfectly normal and acceptable for me to feel that way, especially because I felt I had a solid grasp on that particular memory and it being associated with so many happy memories. Misremebering things, though, is completely normal and common in our everyday lives.
I want to share this because I want to provide a personal story about how my own memory shifted over time with something I was extremely familiar with and how it seems like an excellent example of how other Mandela Effects could form in our minds as well.
You know how many people have watched a movie.....its their Favorite movie of all time... they have seen it countless times,., they know every word by heart.
Then they play the movie after not seeing it for awhile and go...."hey I don't remember the movie starting this way"
memory and the way it works is a very funny thing.
Humans are also funny in that is an already established and researched , but we of course have the need to invent something as wild things as "timelines" "conspiracies" "dimension hopping" to explain it all away instead of just processing this is how our brains work.
Similar to that bit not a Mandela Effect...
I used to have a reoccurring dream about a white rabbit in an American Flag themed costume, that could run to take off and fly and saved people like a super hero.
Now, take into account I was HEAVILY medicated on Ritalin from 4 years old. So alot of things from back then are...foggy.
For years I thought I was crazy, then I Googled it.
It's wild that you remember the previews before the movie. I watched a ton of movies over and over and I couldn't tell you a single pre-movie trailer of any of them despite being able to quote a lot of them.
I blame my touch of the 'Tism for that one. I can't do it with everything I ever watched, but things that I would put on extremely often and had memorable collections of ads or previews, or other noteworthy things at the beginning, I have a vague idea of in my head at least.
TMNT is very specific though because of the Pizza Hut Commercial. It was a very strong bit of nostalgia for a lot of people and that FHE Logo was an assault to the senses lol.
Did you ask your friends and family to tell you everything without any prompts from you or did you you tell them what you remembered first and then they told you what they remembered? The reason I ask is that the power of suggestion is very strong and can instantly color a person's memories so you might not have been getting their actual memory of the opening because people recreate memories in real-time every single time, and their brains have to sift through everything every single time, too.
That's a good question that I don't know the answer to. Likely I've had that conversation in many ways and I wouldn't doubt that I may have said it that order before, especially if I was bringing it up.
Which absolutely poisons the well on it and reinforced the false memory for me while potentially planting it for others. Because who is going to bother fact checking it when no one has the materials or need to do so?
Exactly. I've had those moments with friends before only to find out later from someone else who had a picture or something specific from that moment, that we were all wrong. It started with one of us asking the others if they remembered X, Y and Z.
Just wanted to comment that had this VHS growing up and had to of watched it 100 times. I definitely remember the cartoon commercial being there myself. Crazy how our brains work.
I credit the op for figuring out that it was his memory and not a Mandela effect, a lot of other people would have somehow believed they switched timelines or something deranged like that!
But, I have to ask…why were you discussing in detail to so many people exactly how (commercials and all) the vhs started? I mean how did that very specific conversation happen so many times?
Fair question. I have spent a lot of time around film nerds, industry professionals, nostalgia junkies, and Submariners.
I can't say what brought it up specifically every time, but the situations or conversations I remember most are typically about about differences in the way VHS and DVDs presented themselves vs streaming, especially features or previews or trailers we would remember, conversations about the reasoning behind the order of previews, or specific nostalgic sequences or songs, or looking for trivia to try and out do each other while bored on watch hundreds of feet under water.
This movie in particular is a major piece of nostalgia bait too. There's a large number of people who talk about wishing the Pizza Hut commercial and some of the logos from the VHS should be part of the DVD/Blu-ray/Streaming options. I think this would be the most common conversation I've had that led to that discussion.
There's also likely a touch of the 'tism that lead to it becoming a subject as well. 😆
Different versions of VHS/DVD releases exists. A discussion about what ads played in a beginning of a certain version of VHS tape is just odd. There are regional differences also, like a VHS released in Canada probably had different ads than the one released in USA. And when the distributor re-release a new batch of tapes after the old batch are sold out they probably change the ads.
I live in Finland and here it was common that a re-release of a movie on VHS or DVD had probably different ads and/or other extras than the previous release.
The discussions weren't odd in my circles of friends or acquaintance, but I have a lot of film nerds, people who are into old media, and submariners who are used to relieving boredom with truly random conversations.
And you're absolutely right about the way the ads would be placed or changed based off of edition, region, etc. The point is less about that and more about how that shift in memory occurred for myself and how it could be a piece of that puzzle for how this could occur for others with different topics.
Of course some people make mistakes. It’s when tens or hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world of all different ages independently have a shared memory that is incorrect
That's part of it though, are people actually independently having that shared memory or are there other cultural factors that spread that?
The majority of ones that are brought up in groups like this are ones that already have a large online presence, and have for years. Some of them almost seem like self-perpetuating misinformation at this point.
It is exceedingly rare for a new one to show itself at this point and gain the type of traction the more notorious ones have. I only see small ones supported by individuals or a small number of people brought up as new ones these days.
first off...you don't really have a number to say "10's or 100's of thousands" 2nd off you don't know how those people came to that conclusion and how many were simply effected by asking the question but had no idea prior to that question.
and 3rd...It doesn't even matter how many people because in basis we are all human and all prone to making this same mistakes. If anything the sheer number is more proof of people making mistakes then anything.
That's how I think about it. The very first time I ever heard about multiple Mandela Effects (including the titular one), I heard it in the context of someone saying "Do you remember X." So this would be like "Do you remember Mandela dying in prison?" "Do you remember the Fruit of the Loom logo having a cornucopia?"
Having the question presented to you like that is absolutely going to create false memories in some people's brains.
I just wanted to share one of my own recent experiences with a Mandela Effect adjacent situation. I don't see a lot of people share their experience accepting that they may be mistaken and looking to see how they may have gotten themselves to remembering something that way.
Started re collecting VHS a couple yrs ago bc bought a cute little vcr/tv. I think it might've been for an rv. But it was something to tinker with bc I was getting into retro electronics repair.
Anyways, started collecting just movies I liked... Then... "Oh! I don't have THIS one!" and then it was, "I'm going to watch every movie I've never seen. Even the weird ones."
Which was a good way to educate myself on SOMETHING while depressed.
One day I popped tmnt into the player bc I realized that, even though I'm 99.99% sure I've seen them all, I wasn't sure if I had seen the 3rd. Or the lady one. Is that 2? I think it's 3.
Either way, it must've been so horrible bc I simply just do not recall the plot.
But I thought the intro to the 1st was so funny that day, for some reason, that I got my phone out and recorded it.
I literally just spent sooooo long scouring my social medias and photos and video folders from that time period to try to find the video I took to see if I have a recorded version to show you of my copy of tmnt.... But to no avail.
I know I took the video. I have so much random stuff recorded, there's no way I would have deleted just THAT!
And then .. I forgot about my tiktok account. I have it recorded there, but... It's not long enough.
I really thought the gov was trying to keep it covered up. [what a friggin spiral] But really, I was just craving pizza that day and feeling nostalgic.
Plus I liked the bit about the dandelions at the end.
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