We all remember when Sinbad gave the performance of his life in 1996 as a genie in the hit family film Shazaam!
We watched in awe as he taught two suburban white kids that magical powers are horse hockey and no match for the love and courage we all possess in our hearts, and we laughed nervously when he chimed in with his crude catch-phrase, “Kiss my genie ass!”
Or did we?
Your mom says that never happened. Snopes says it never happened. You google it and find nothing.
Sinbad himself claims to know nothing about this movie. He even jokes about it on Twitter. Why would he do this to us?
Turns out it’s not Sinbad’s fault we can’t access copies of the film Shazaam!
This collective memory of a wonderful movie that apparently never really happened is an example of “The Mandela Effect.” In fact, the sham film Shazaam! is the eighth most popular topic on mandelaeffect.com.
You may remember South African human rights activist Nelson Mandela. But you may not remember him in the same way I do. Some believe he died in prison in the ‘80s. Others recall Mandela dying in 2013 after winning the Nobel Peace Prize and serving as South Africa’s first black president.
Now, you might say that misremembering one of the greatest and most celebrated black leaders in human history as quietly passing in prison 30 years before his actual death is offensive–at worst, whitewashed revisionism. At best, privileged indifference.
But I have a different theory.
I think that something happened–a false memory implanted by the US military, the end of the Mayan calendar, something–that changed our reality forever. To find out, we must look at the events of the world between the two dates in question:
During this timeline, CERN’s particle accelerator founded the Higgs boson particle (aka “The God Particle”), Betty White and someone named Billy Graham may or may not have died, and a portal opened, triggering a dimensional shift between parallel realities. A “glitch in the matrix,” if you will.
What we know: In the new parallel universe, Kit-Kat bars are actually called Kit Kat bars. The Berenstein Bears are now The Berenstain Bears. Forrest Grump is Forrest Gump. The cereal you know as FRUIT LOOPS is now called FROOT LOOPS. We all remember David Matthew and His Band, the ragtime, cat-gut string and spoons music collective from the ‘20s. But in this timestream they are a 1990s alt-rock group called the Dave Matthews Band.
It turns out Mr. Monopoly never even owned a monocle.
No one is for sure for sure if our new reality is different in any other ways, but comment sections everywhere are hard at work to better understand if there are other Mandela Effects out there.
Most of the things that used to exist still do, but some things don’t exist anymore. Like Curious George’s tail, the Monopoly guy’s monocle and the movie Shazaam!.
Why would the US government wipe this movie out? What are they doing with all the VHS clamshells?
Yes, Sinbad is a comedian who used to wear shiny, loose pants in the ‘90s. He was also a sass-box genie in the movie Shazaam!. But if you talk to him, he will tell you these are both lies.
Don’t believe me? Ask him yourself this Saturday when he hosts Funk Fest at Thunder Valley Casino Resort. He does it every year.
Tickets are $45.95-$159.95.
Learn more about the hit film Shazaam! at Snopes.
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