THE MANDELA EFFECT PHENOMENON: An Interview With Documentarian Robert Kiviat

Introduction

Surely you’ve heard of the Mandela Effect phenomenon. This mass misremembering takes its name from the misconception many held that Nelson Mandela died in captivity. This was long before his actual death was reported on, December 5, 2013. Everyone has their favorite. For example, the Berenstain Bears, the Sinbad-starring genie movie that never was, or “Jiffy” peanut butter. It’s fun to sit around a campfire and misremember time with old friends. Throw in a few cold brewskis and you have a rousing Saturday night.

Such is the bedrock of the newest documentary from Robert Kiviat, The Mandela Effect Phenomenon. Bringing in a definitive panel of two experts, journalist Mark LaFlamme and author and YouTuber Jacob Israel, Kiviat delivers a “courtroom-level presentation” that our world has been irreversibly altered and many among us remember the prior version of events. Simulation theory. Parallel universe theory and the hadron collider at CERN are all floated as reasons for the phenomenon.

[As a side note, simulation theory is the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. Not the concept, itself, but that people believe it. A person who believes that reality is a simulation can have no respect for human life and no sense of empathy or compassion.]

What is ‘The Truth’?

The truth, as I see it, as bland and bleak as it is, is that we’re just idiots, by and large. I thought it was Berenstein Bears, too. But I’m comfortable admitting I might be wrong because I was a child and had many of my decisions made for me. So admittedly, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to details.

The experts bemoan misquoted lines from classic films like Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and Forrest Gump. Lines such as “Luke I am your father” and “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Instead of, “No, I am your father” and “Life was like a box of chocolates” It’s as though they don’t understand context or shorthand. We know we’re saying the lines wrong but outside of the context of the film, we change it to stand alone or work universally. 

In a hilarious segment, LaFlamme is incensed that the original lyric of the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood song is “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood” rather than “the neighborhood.” He gets so worked up about that one word that while he’s raging against the absurdity of it he doesn’t even realize that at one point he says “wonderful” rather than “beautiful.” It’s wonderfully elucidating as to how easy it is to substitute words for the beautiful songs we swear to love and know implicitly. 

To Forget or Not to Forget

While it’s fun to share our own personal mis-remembrances and mental nip slips, I think Hanlon’s Razor is more applicable in this situation: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” They cry that logos are different. as though branding isn’t constantly being updated, streamlined, retooled, focus-grouped, and relaunched.

They bemoan changes in the text of the Bible as though they’re unaware of the thousands of translations of the book. (My personal favorite is a version in Hawaiian Pidgin called Da Good an Spesho Book. It should be the only way this truly good and special book be read.)

The fact of the matter is we use a lot of shorthand in our daily lives and we pull things out of context. And, yes, we brilliant bohemian masters of our own destiny do, in fact, forget things. To be more precise, there are things we’ve collectively chosen to forget. “The Macarena.” Jesse Camp. Five seasons of Grace Under Fire with Brett Butler.

These things happened and, who knows, in a few years we’ll have a new Internet subculture saying the song was actually good. He was lucid. And the Wendy’s guy was the standout costar. The experts point to the recent explosion of instances of the Mandela Effect as proof that a seismic event has occurred in our lifetime that alters reality. But if anything, it’s the Internet, itself. Ideas are viral, and the community is enticing. People are banding together to discuss these phenomena because it’s better than being alone. But there’s no conspiracy to be found – just the glittery sheen of nostalgia. 

Interview

I chatted with Robert Kiviat about his documentary The Mandela Effect Phenomena, his experts, and the role of a documentarian in these increasingly strange times. Here is the synopsis of his film, followed by that conversation:

Something mind-blowing is happening, where half the people swear reality’s been altered like they’re from another timeline. Millions claim movies are different, and TV show titles, celebrities’ names, logos and brands, other cultural touchstones, and even the Bible are not what they once were. Is a supernatural force “Editing” history?

(Edited for content and clarity)

Eric McClanahan:

Hey Robert! So we’re talking about The Mandela Effect Phenomenon. I literally just watched the movie maybe an hour or two ago. A lot of information, so let me begin by asking: as a documentarian do you feel it is your position to ask questions or offer answers?

Robert Kiviat:

Ernest Hemingway, believe it or not, though he’s known as a novel writer, was a journalist before that and I believe, you research something so well. That you know it so well, that you basically write what you know about and care about the most. I got involved in 2016 or so in this investigation into what the Mandela Effect was.

I believe I’m presenting a courtroom-level presentation. That if a jury were to look at my movie it would be the prosecution that the Mandela Effect is real. There is no doubt. We have residual evidence that’s easy to see. We believe we’ve made this point that you cannot deny. In some examples, the evidence is so overwhelming that at one time, certain movies, possibly the biblical verses, names of celebrities, and a whole plethora of cultural touchstones, have been changed from what they were at one time in our present reality.

What could have caused that? It’s not people misremembering. It’s not people running around going “Yeah, I remember it this way but maybe I was wrong.” There is evidence in a courtroom you can present that could at least convince many members of that jury that this is a real effect. Caused by something that we can’t explain completely.

Eric McClanahan:

So the logline of the film says “half” of people remember things one way and “half” remembers it differently. Do you think that figure is accurate?

Robert Kiviat:

There is no doubt. You’re talking about billions of views on the Internet, whether it be YouTube, whether it be TikTok, whether it be Google, whether it be Reddit. Especially Reddit, by the way. You can see where we get that number from. And that’s just not me – the estimate right now is that about 50% of the population believe certain Mandela Effects are one way and they’re not what they used to be.

I’m not saying every Mandela Effect has the same breakdown of percentages but I am saying that we can present in a courtroom without a doubt that there appears to be that kind of wide girth of the population that thinks reality, at least part of the reality that we live in, was altered by something from what it used to be. 

Eric McClanahan:

Do you feel your presentation would have more credence if you brought in a third or fourth perspective, perhaps one that argued against your view so that you could dismantle those arguments? You have Mark LaFlamme and Jacob Israel and they both give great testimonials throughout the film but do you think showing another viewpoint would be beneficial to selling this idea?

Robert Kiviat:

I’ve always felt as I do with that credo I said earlier as a journalist: when you research something as far as you can research it like a prosecuting attorney and you can present that case, you present that case as a journalist. I believe if anybody goes out and checks my information as presented in this documentary they’re going to find out it’s hard to argue these things are real, these things have happened.

If you want to go to the academic world and you want to hear some lofty medical psychological mumbo-jumbo, great – let’s get back to the evidence we show in our movie. For instance, the scene in Moonraker. Let’s just take this one on for a second. We have a scene in the James Bond film Moonraker, it’s famous, and generations know about it. We have this hulking figure with a metal mouth named Jaws. He’s a scary figure in the franchise of the James Bond movies. At the end of the movie, he looks down at a kind of very buxom nerdy girl and she smiles at him. He smiles back, with these great metal teeth, and she smiles wider with braces!

That’s the reason the scene exists! You watch the scene now and she doesn’t have braces anymore. There are millions and millions of people, like that girl at the end of our movie, as the credits roll, for two and a half minutes. I would put her on the stand on that one in any courtroom in America!

She remembers it five different ways from Sunday, and why she remembers it the way that she does is more important than that she remembers it! Talking to her father, thinking of her own braces. Why would she bring up braces if they weren’t there? She’s not going to make up that memory in her brain. There are so many people that believe. That one is on Reddit, by the way. If you look into that on Reddit, people are just freaking over that one.

[To this I would say that the scene in Frankenstein where the creature befriends the little girl by the lake still works even though she doesn’t have stitches in her scalp or bolts in her neck. It’s the juxtaposition of the small and sweet with the large and grotesque that creates the cinematic magic.]

Eric McClanahan:

I did look into that one, because I watched all the Bond films when I was younger, also with my dad, and I thought that did sound right.

Robert Kiviat:

By the way, I don’t have to prove – I did a lot of work in the UFO field, I’m sure you guys checked me out, right? I’ve put more TV specials on about UFO evidence probably than any other producer on the planet, and though I believe the last few years of bullshit in Capitol Hill with UFOs was a grifting, not a real kind of disclosure of any kind, UFOs are interesting, but I would never play cards that are not real.

I would never make up things just because people love the idea of UFOs. When you look at some of these Mandela Effects we show in our movie, you don’t have to have a million of them. Like I’ve said in interviews about my UFO work, you don’t need a lot of videos, you need one definitive video. One amazing moment that will prove it once and for all. The Mandela Effect is no different. If you can prove to an average human being or a jury that the scene with Dolly with no braces makes no sense.

Or how about the song “We Are the Champions” by Queen? It’s a great example of the Mandela Effect. The evidence? Let’s look at it. You have people throughout the years going to stadiums, like me, going “We are the champions… of the world” at the end – we all say that. Or, you see the scene in carpool karaoke with James Corden on CBS. You have Julia Roberts, you have Gwen Stefani, you have George Clooney in the car, all singing “We are the Champions…” and they’re freaking out. Where is it? Where is “of the world?”

And then of course you have the two most definitive pieces of evidence about this Mandela Effect. You’ve got, first of all, Freddie Mercury at Live Aid, right at the end of “We Are the Champions,” the crowd is waiting for the “of the world” and he does it! And then, the pièce de résistance of this whole thing, the biggest moment of all evidence: the liner notes of the album. Years ago, you’d get your album, there are the actual lyrics in the liner notes so you can sing along. The lyrics on the liner notes of the actual album say “of the world” and they don’t have it now on the record.

So can you imagine the company putting out the record, they’ve got the liner notes there so you can sing along, and at the end, you can’t sing along to that because they’re not singing it anymore? Now that would be a scandal back in the record days, like they’d catch that and fix that. They didn’t fix it. That’s the way the song has been for so many people but now when you play the record they go “We are the champions” and it ends, no “of the world” at the end.

So, look, there are people who might say, can we bring on people who will be skeptical? What would be the point? You know journalism today has become kind of a joke, I think. It used to be you would watch the news and you would trust the evidence because people were good journalists. You didn’t have to have every pro and con, every single story has a pro and con, yes and no. I think the people who watch our movie will do their research and then tell other people to watch our movie again. Because it’s hard to argue some of the things we mention. Hard to argue.

[If you’re reading this and hearing the song in your head, your brain is probably auto-completing the “of the world.” However, you’re probably also remembering that being immediately followed by a blistering guitar solo, because you’re remembering the middle of the song, not the end.]

Eric McClanahan:

I would agree. One thing I would say is, are you familiar with the concept of Hanlon’s Razor?

Robert Kiviat:

Occam’s Razor?

Eric McClanahan:

Not Occam’s, Hanlon’s. 

Robert Kiviat:

No, I’m not. Tell me.

Eric McClanahan:

Hanlon’s Razor is “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” 

Robert Kiviat:

What’s that first part? Malice?

Eric McClanahan:

Yes, in searching for an answer you go to CERN, was that your lean to go to CERN, or was that Jacob Israel? Because he brings it up a lot.

Robert Kiviat:

Oh, great question. Thanks for asking. The prevailing theories are CERN’s quantum particle collisions triggered some kind of shift to our timeline where two timelines have somehow merged and some of the residual evidence that we’re pointing to is the artifacts, the residue, of the merging of those two timelines together from a CERN scientific experiment gone wrong.

Stephen Hawking before he died, many other people, as our movie points out, were worried that the CERN particle collisions that they’re conducting would cause some kind of black hole to form or whatever. Maybe it caused something much less significant. Maybe in the blink of an eye, something happened to our timeline.

There’s, again, another gentleman named Geordie Rose who we show in our movie who has been behind the quantum computer for years who predicted in the 2015-16 period, when the Mandela Effects were starting to be seen, he said “We believe that using quantum experiments we’ll be able to pull a piece of one dimension into this dimension and maybe back and forth,” and that seems to have happened. That’s what we’re trying to say. Maybe that happened. 

There’s another theory about simulation. You know, Elon Musk has said we might be living in a simulation. In fact, he believes we are living in a simulation. People who have come on the Joe Rogan podcast and other things have said, as physicists, that they believe the simulation could explain what our reality is, and then they point to the Mandela Effect as evidence of those glitches coming from that kind of thing. That we’re living in a computer.

I don’t know about that. But I think these are the prevailing theories. We try our best to show the theories. They’re not my theories. They’re the theories that many experts are trying to point to. And of course, if you’re a skeptic you’re just going to say “Ah, maybe it’s just mass misremembering. The human mind just remembers things…” and that’s why we point to this residual evidence in our documentary that you can’t deny, like the Dolly [in Moonraker] thing. 

How about James Earl Jones: “Luke, I am your father.” That’s a seminal kind of thing in many of our memories of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. How do you find out that Darth Vader is the father of Luke? He goes out and he speaks to people, James Earl Jones, about the movie. He says “When I saw the line ‘Luke, I am your father,’ I was wondering how were they going to make that right? How were they going to make that work?”

Then he goes on Two & a Half Men, the CBS comedy, years later. And he goes on, and he’s playing the part of himself. You see in our movie, the writers write in the line. He says to the guy who is getting the voicemail in his voice, “So what do you want? Luke, I am your father or This is CNN.” And it’s like, he’s not going to make that mistake!

No one’s going to make a mistake like that! And then another piece of evidence, just like in a courtroom, is the figurine. We didn’t make a big deal about this in the movie but people should know about it. Lucasfilm made a figurine of Darth Vader and you press the button and it goes “Luke, I am your father.” Why would they make a mistake about their own movie? It makes no sense. At all.

[Context. The word you’re looking for is “context.” In the film, the conversation goes:

Darth Vader: Obi-Wan never told you about your father.

Luke Skywalker: He told me enough. He told me you killed him.

Darth Vader: No, I am your father.

And that works in context. When we lift the line from the film, we add the “Luke” to give it context. This is so it doesn’t sound like we’re staking a patriarchal claim on every stranger we meet.]

Eric McClanahan:

I didn’t know that one.

Robert Kiviat:

Oh yeah, check it out! And back to your question, people should watch our movie and then go do the research. Some of the things we’re going to point to if we get a question and answer going is some of the evidence that we’re talking about.

Eric McClanahan:

Nice. Well, I do think that’s our time but I thank you very much for talking to me today, Robert, and best of luck with the documentary.

Robert Kiviat:

My pleasure. Great questions. Thank you so much.

The Mandela Effect Phenomenon will be available on Digital on July 9, 2024, if reality has not collapsed completely by then.

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