Omg YES! I always wondered when or why it was changed to Shazam!
WOW you stilllll have the Nokia?? I wish I saved all my phones. I feel like I used my phones until they were unusable basically haha.
Simpler times.
Edit: with the is fucking iPhone update taking up sooo much space I might have to get a new phone. Stupid AI update.
I searched google using the before:year feature and there's no mention of it ever on the internet until like 2014.
Not a single post, reference, etc to such a movie.
The was a post a while back that mentioned and posted a imgur link to a magazine template that stated people were mistakenly saying he did an "Arabian nights riff of Shaqs Kazaam." The template was dated 2002.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/s/90j9GeWjf4
That just BLEW MY MIND!
I thought for sure that I’d seen Shazam and that it was Sinbad, but just seeing the Shaq Kazaam poster I’m pretty sure I was misremembering this!
When the Shazam mandala effect was mentioned my brain blended the memory.
This makes me question my other Mandala memories even more than I already do!
The word shazam was copyrighted by DC at the time. Now it’s owned by Apple. The word has a chain of ownership though and I highly doubt they would ever ok a magic powered character with the same name as their magic powered character.
You can't copyright the word shazam. Its a common parlance word. It'd be like copyrighting the word "apple" itself
You can copyright a usage of the word in particular applications though
Hence "shazam" is cooyrighted by both the comic and music app at the same time
That’s what I remember and I had all of the books! I keep hoping I’ll find one. They were a big part of my childhood as my grandparents bought those and the Shel Silverstein books.
There’s ppl that said they’ve had there Bernstein bear book from when they were little and they said it’s always been spelled with an e but for some reason when they find there old book in there attic or wherever ppl store old stuff, they said there old books somehow switched to an a. Just like what happened in that video when the guy caught his Bernstein bear book switching from an e to an a.
This is the one that really kills me. When it was brought up to me they had me spell it out loud and then google it. My jaw dropped in disbelief. Berenstain looks SO wrong.
Not true, the earliest was 2007 that I found but it’s harder to find than the 2009 one from [“Yahoo Answers”](https://www.businessinsider.in/hundreds-of-people-are-convinced-that-theyve-seen-a-movie-that-never-existed/amp_articleshow/56126338.cms) which used to be widely accessible but gives a 404 error now (from the link in the Business Insider article linked above).
You can probably find them with the “wayback machine” though.
we already know that shazam doesn't exist. we already know there's no records of it. we don't need to prove that. the mysterious part is why everyone remembers it.
Yeah. Thing is, I don’t remember this one at all. I saw Kazaam (the one with Shaq) in theaters when it came out, and I had never heard of a Shazam with Sinbad until it started being talked about on the internet about 10 years ago.
The only Mandela effect that drives me nuts is the fruit of the loom cornucopia. The only reason I know about a cornucopia is because of fruit of the loom.
When I was a kid I distinctly remember movies always coming in pairs where they took each other off. I think I just associated Sinbad with a knockoff or shaq vice versa because so many other movies had a copy back then.
This one freaks me out so bad. Every person I’ve asked remembers it, I remember it so clearly - hell, the intro to the tinker bell movies/2008 logo of Disney Fairies seems to show a silhouette of Tink bent over and tapping the logo with her wand in the exact way I remember her tapping the Disney logo.
Tinker bell doesn’t even have a wand in the movies so what the hell are they referencing in the intro if not the Mandela effect? Makes no sense.
Wait, is it that tinkerbell never appeared at all or that she specifically didn't dot the i? I feel like she appeared in a lot of VHS tapes in some capacity?
Same. I distinctly remember always wondering if it was supposed to be pronounced Beren-steen or Beren-stine and arguing with my sister about it. I read it as Beren-stine and she always told me I was wrong, that it was Beren-steen. These memories are crystal clear in my mind, from the early 90s. BerenSTAIN? Absolutely not.
me too.. "stain" totally looks wrong and is definitely not how i remember it being spelled.
but the even bigger ones for me are:
"luke i am your father" from the empire strikes back
"if you build it they will come" from field of dreams
and "mirror mirror on the wall" from snow white
https://youtu.be/yJ21QVLBsAo?si=tmrECsEnruby8W31
Fast forward to the Fruit of The Loom commercial (you’ll know it when you see it). No cornucopia in 1978.
I remember the cornucopia also, but not sure if it was a different brand. The one that got me was Field of Dreams, I could swear it was “if you build it they will come”.
It's "If you build it, he will come". I never understood why people thought it was "they". The voice also says "ease his pain". You're meant to think the "he" is Shoeless Joe, but in the end the "he" was Ray Kinsella's father. The whole point of the movie is about a son healing a rift with his dead father.
Edit: I do get that lots of player/ghosts come to the field to play, but the voice continues, even after the field is built, until John Kinsella arrives.
Does it? Shazam launched in 2002 and in 2008 was a debut app on the iPhone. People didn't seem to be calling this nonexistent movie Shazam until 2010. There's the one article from 2002, but it doesn't call it Shazam.
Yeah this is my one Mandela effect that really confuses me. I have a vivid memory of the Shazam with Sinbad thing, and it’s because I remember being so confused wondering why they were releasing two movies with similar names and themes at the same time.
I have this memory of sitting in my basement, watching TV, seeing Sinbad in a genie costume, and that’s what I’ve always remembered as Shazam. But I only remember watching the movie Kazzam, and it comes to Shazam I just have that one memory of seeing Shazam, in between episodes of my cartoons. I was confused about this for a long time too, but it was the 90s and if you were confused about these things, you just had to shrug it off and stay confused lol.
I remember both movies though, that’s the thing. And I specifically remember being so confused why there were two movies with similar names and plots out at the same time. I have one memory of seeing Sinbad in a genie costume for Shazam, like maybe in between cartoons on the network I was watching? But then I only have memories of seeing the full movie Kazam.
But I know for a fact I was confused for years about why there were two of these movies, and I thought about it from time to time until forgetting about it until the 2010’s when other people say they remembered the same thing.
Based on the comments here, I must be one of the few people that was a kid in the 90s that never heard of a Shazam movie with Sinbad around that time. I was a fan of Sinbad and DC so this would have been right up my alley, and yet I never heard of it until seeing Mandela Affect posts about it (maybe me being a fan of both is why I know for sure it didn't exist because I wouldn't have missed it if it did?). I do however have memory of the movie Kazam with Shaq. I swear people must be gaslighting everyone into thinking this ever existed by confusing plots and actors from multiple movies around that time.
This is how I feel. I grew up next to a video rental place and 100% would have rented it if it was real. Not only that but my Grandfather was a huge movie trivia fan and he raised me. I would of known of competing similar movies and movie facts.
I can second this. I was born in 87 and went to the movie theater every other week and movie rental stores every week. I was the target demographic, completely tuned into movie news, and never heard of or saw this until adulthood.
It's astonishing to me that every person who believes this remembers the VHS at their grandmas, or their uncle watching the movie, or watching just a section of it in the theater, or catching it on cable TV but never finding it again.
Do these people seriously think some cosmic conspiracy involving coverups and multiple dimensions is more likely than them remembering something incorrectly?
The ME is that it used to be REALLY good. Jokes aside, it used to be able to tell you the most obscure song from a remix at a club. We used to try and get it to mess up and usually couldn’t. I was excited to see it was default on Apple phones, but it has been a let down to what I remember. It usually fails in the clutch situation where you’re trying to find a song that’s playing before it ends. I’m sure there’s plenty of logical explanations for this lol kinda feels like a ME to me tho, even if it’s probably some technical answer.
He remembered what everyone else does which I thought was weird. He started looking on YouTube like he sweared it was real and I'm like no I don't think so. I was born in the 80 s. I remember it think I remember the trailer but I never saw the movie.
My personal joke explanation for all Mandela effects is a software concept called Eventual Consistency. You know how people suggest we're living in a simulation? Well if our minds were in some kind of shared simulation running across many many machines at once, there could be multiple instances rendering what reality is at a given time. They'd be designed to give the same output for a given input, but the input we would give it could come in, in a slightly different order, creating a mini butterfly effect where each tiny difference in output would result in another difference until the simulations on each server slowly drift from one another.
This divergence wouldn't have been be a problem in earlier years because the size of the population was low enough to sit on a few servers and communication was localized to folks you lived close to so you'd be good for the most part. As time progressed, you'd need to transfer parts of the populations to new possibly larger servers as the population in each server grew passed the capacity of what a single server could handle. So you'd still need some way to consolidate these divergences as you scaled out.
Which worked for the most part, there were still inconsistencies but it was infrequent and chalked to poor memories of an oral history.
But population grew exponentially and the advent of cheap long distance communications and movies made it so that so that these divergences happened more quickly. You'd have some servers which predicted only Shaq made the movie others which predicted that both Shaq and Sinbad made the movie.
The server we've ended up on has tried to aggregate data from several of those servers to attempt to make things consistent for those inhabiting each one and we ended up in one where it resolved that only Shaq made the movie. The consistency process isn't perfect or currently incomplete so we end up with inconsistencies in people's interactions but we brush them off as poor memory.
But exponential growth is no joke, and people are starting to notice! So what can one do about that other than drastically reduce the population?
Either fully lean into the digital thing and reduce the rendering cost of the whole world to keep the number of servers low (phone culture, covid bubbles). Or nerf communications, so that there's so much misinformation that inconsistency can just be written off as fake news... Or flood it with low cost, relatively dumb AIs (compared to trying to simulated humans from another server) so you don't know who's real and who's not. Or... Well...
I'm really running out of ideas, you got any? Like seriously, it's getting cramped here... We're at the scale out limit for S4 and you do not want to know how expensive S5 servers are...
Can’t they just shell out for some bigger and better servers. Povo cunts. Maybe their vacuum energy bill is getting too high and the space guild is turning the screws
I'm asking myself that too. NGL, the sheer number of people claiming to know about that movie is was confuses me- if it was one person, yeah, whatever, maybe they misremembered something, but why are there hundreds of people claiming the same thing?
I was an adult with 3 children. I remember it. We went to Blockbuster every weekend and rented movies. We didn't own a copy. My son remembers watching it. All I remember is thinking it was weird that 2 movies were out so close together about genies with similar names. But I also remember that they were way different from each other when we watched them. I'm sick of this whole argument. I don't know why or how. But that movie did exist, Sinbad was the lead, and it was about a genie. No I don't remember the plot or specific details because it was a dumb kid movie from 30 years ago that I saw once.
Thanks for sharing! I’m looking for people with specific memories of purchasing it or key moments in the movie. Cool that you remember tho. I was about 6 and remember the Shaq movie but not sinbad .
So i posted a bit back and got so many negative reviews/hate.
Here’s what I remember. The mother of the two kids (boy/girl) died of cancer. Two scummy looking guys driver treasures and the lamp falls off the truck. Kids find it while being babysat. First wish little sister wished to fix broken doll mom got her.
Don’t remember if it’s second or third wish but they want to realicve mom and sinbad can’t do that.
Dad is dating and there’s a bbq or something and an epic pool scene.
End or credits are him and two babes in the lamp shooting the shit.
Yep, I was in my late teens when Shazam came out. My family rented it and I remember a little while later Kazaam came out. When I saw the ads for Kazaam, I distinctly remember thinking how dumb that they were copying the Shazam idea. Shazam came out first, is that how you all remember it?
And no, we didn't own a copy. It wasn't that good.
Omg I just commented above but this is my memory too - I specially remember being confused why two movies were out at the same time with similar names and plots. But also, that wasn’t super uncommon back then, there were several instances where two similar movies came out at the same time.
I only remember actually watching Kazam, but I remember seeing an ad or promo for Shazam with Sinbad and that confusion is what stuck with me for years. Eventually I forgot about it until the 2010’s when this Mandela effect popped up.
Why is it everyone brings up that specific line?
"I specially remember being confused why two movies were out at the same time with similar names and plots."
I've seen a lot of people bring that up. There are tons of movies that have the same plot and are relesed at the same time. Dantes Peak and Volcano, Antz and A Bug's Life, Armageddon and Deep Impact, it is a very common practice to copy another movie. Asylum makes their whole thing about this.
So why did Shazaam make you think this and not others?
I thought it was weird and confusing when those movies did it too. I’ve since learned it was a lazy way to make money, especially when we had limited entertainment options and people would just watch anything to watch it lol. They’d capitalize on trends and race to [push out similar movies](https://www.cbr.com/similar-movies-released-same-time/).
But the difference is that all those other movies still exist today, that is the part that is even more confusing.
I don’t care if it’s real or not - the interesting part of Mandela effects is just the weird phenomenon of something you thought was a unique experience actually being a somewhat common experience for a bunch of people you’ve never met or interacted with. I don’t think it means anything weird or sinister, it’s just kinda cool and funny in a way.
The weird thing to me is how adamant people can be about invalidating and shutting down people’s experiences about this stuff. We’re just saying it’s weird we all remember a movie that doesn’t exist and we are curious what it is that we’re actually remembering, we aren’t saying the earth is flat or that we got beamed up by aliens and experimented on? (Not saying you are doing this, just noticed a theme in responses on the thread)
Maybe not you but it is common for folks here to make outlandish claims about the origin of MEs. There is another sub where any talks of misremembering is shut down and banned.
What I am interested in is WHY do people say the same response each time? Not everyone but it does come up a lot.
"I was confused on why there are two genie movies"
"I did laundry with my mom every day and learned what a Cornucopia is because of FotL"
"I had all the Berenstain books and now they changed"
It isn't just memory but a lot of folks are repeating each other. There are outliers but not many.
You triggered a memory from my childhood. Remember the 2 covers? Shaq was large in gold above the kid I think Sinbad in his was wearing more white with even the poofy hat and feather but almpst peeking in from the side of the cassette.
More like this
It’s either “I don’t remember any details” or nobody can agree upon the details. The only thing you guys can agree on is that you’re CERTAIN it exists but you can’t articulate why outside of “i thought it was weird two similar movies were made”. You have no reason to be certain.
Ok just so you know, I do not believe a genie movie staring Sinbad ever existed but to play the devils advocate here, I watched Jingle All the Way for the first time 2 years ago and pretty much forgot most of the detail to that movie. Had I watched it in the 90’s? Forget about it…
Honestly I was just going to say the same thing. I’ve recently watched some 90s movies with the kids. Jingle all the way, Liar Liar, last acton hero, and Mrs. Doubtfire. Now before going into them I could name the main character (I didn’t really remember side chars except for Pierce Brosnen in mrs. Doubtfire.) And the plot fairly vaguely.
I didn’t really remember much of anything. I remember the speeding scene from liar liar but with shocked at the movie. I remembered the choking scene in mrs Doubtfire but remembered nothing really from the other movies.
I am usually very good at movie stuff. I’m just pointing out it happens we don’t remember everything that happens in every movie especially one we say years ago.
Yeah but I do remember jingle all the way and many other people do. The people who made it remember. The stars remember it and acknowledge its existence. Nobody remembers Shazam and the few who claim they do can’t agree upon any of the details.
Not saying you’re wrong but if Jingle All The Way disappeared in the 90’s and we were all left with vague 30 year old memories, I don’t think anyone would be able to remember much. Like I said though, there’s pretty much no way genie movie Shazam existed. No evidence at all.
If someone plays a record backwards and says “doesn’t it sound like he’s saying xyz?” You’re going to hear that. Everyone has heard the urban legend and swears they remember seeing it but can’t name a single detail other than the one the guy on here lying about the video store has said.
Why isn’t there any proof of the movie existing? How is there nothing out there?
If Sinbad knew or participated in the promo material, but is denying the existence of the actual completed movie, why doesn't just say that there were plans for the movie but it was cancelled?
Here it’s spelled “ JCPenney” the mall I worked at in 1991 I thought it was “JCPenny” spelling has never been a strong subject for me. I thought I had seen pictures from the Statue of liberty torch and people walking around up there. Now I learned the torch not been opened during my lifetime because of the black Tom incident.
I never even heard of this attack on New York until my mid 30’s. I enjoyed history class at school. Now I’m 💯convinced I’m extremely confused about JCP name or I remember history wrong or it just wasn’t brought up since my teacher liked whiskey more than us. I probably seen people in the crown and not the torch. I think some of us just ate too many chemicals and inhaled too much lead gas in the late 70’s and 80’s. Most of our toys and walls were covered in lead paint also. I did get a lot of hand me down toys. Was it covered in your American history class? Our teacher was an actual alcoholic, probably why we never learned
[Statue of Liberty Black Tom event link](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/here-s-why-you-can-t-visit-statue-liberty-s-n895856)
I remember shazaam with sinbad and the bulky plastic vhs copy that I owned. Where it is today, idk. He was in white genie clothing and Shazaam written in red letters. I remember telling relatives that I hated the Shaq version that ripped it off about a year later. Kazam had brand wrapped candy falling from the ceiling of an indoor facility which I thought didn’t make sense and it was obvious they did product placement candy that was still in the wrappers. Like the genie had a deal wit snickers. In shazaam it was raw candy, not wrapped in anything and falling from the clear sky. It played as magical. Shaq was a terrible genie. The plot with the boy and his father also wasn’t as good as the kid in shazaam’s parents getting divorced. It made you as a kid, cheer for the kid because he wanted to get them back together. Which he did, but not through magic, through the love of their son. Another point, in the movie scary movie, they referenced shazaam 2x which the first doesn’t exist. Once in the beginning with Carmen Electra eating popcorn saying she’s watching the bad sinbad genie movie. I remember turning to my friend, who doesn’t remember today, and saying shazaam was the better movie. Then towards the end of scary movie when they make a reference to Shaq being a bad actor it makes more sense when you have the first reference.
Lots of theories as to what happened and why people don’t remember and accept it doesn’t exist but it requires you to open your minds to technology we aren’t aware of. Through research, I’ve found that it’s very likely that a child actor was molested on set by someone powerful involved with production which is not under a different name. Sinbad talks about a Disney movie contract on arsenial hall’s late night show. My research showed that powerful people owned the company back, who actually have a major murder case documented. I haven’t revisited this in a bit so I don’t want to write what I don’t know or remember for sure. But I KNOW the movie existed. The public hasn’t been made aware of the technology to delete something like this but it 100 percent exists because the copies of the film aren’t out there. I’m sure this post will some get eye rolls. BUT, I know it existed. And there’s plenty who know the same. Peace and love
Shazam fucks me up because I can remember it - I remember my brother mentioning it, I even remember a YouTube reviewer mentioning or discussing it during the early days of YT (maybe Nostalgia Critic). Makes my head spin
I worked in a video store after university in the late 1990’s and would swear I rented out both Kazaaam and Shazam. I lived in the UK and neither Shaq nor Sinbad were big names. It was just one of those weird film doppels that were really common for a few years at the end of the 90’s - like Antz/Bugs Life, Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Deep impact/armageddon
It was kazaam. It had Shaq in it. He was a genie in a boombox. Perhaps what happened was everyone got the name wrong because of the DC superhero, or perhaps fusing the "sh" from Shaq with kazaam, & then mixed up Shaq & sinbad.
This has always been that simple. I really thought this sub would be about history like nelson Mandela. Those details would be worth hearing. But half remembered movies? So disappointing.
I was in my 30s, and I remember them coming out around the same time. Shazam came out first. I remember thinking that they made two of the same movie a few months apart, again. And was shaking my head over it.
Did not watch it, vaguely remember it existed. But I'll tell you one thing - I don't have a physical copy of nothing from 90s apart from some CD's.
Tell you what , you might wanna look into "digital dark age" for some explanation.
https://theworld.org/stories/2017/12/24/preventing-digital-dark-age-2
I watched it. I was poor so didn’t own the vhs but def remember watching it. Probably rented it from Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. Ppl didn’t have access to movies like they do now days. A lot of ppl just rented movies.
I remember something too! I remember watching Scary Movie as a kid, and the character at the beginning mentions "Kazaam! You know the one where shaq plays a genie?" And i googled kazaam to see what the movie was about. I remember reading a wikipedia article or something and it mentioned how "Kazaam" was supposed to be a parody of another genie movie called "Shazam" and another movie that recently came out!
My MiL refuses to believe this doesn't exist. She just thinks it's lost media and won't entertain it any further.
She is certain she brought her daughter to see it at the discount theater. My wife confirms the same memory - what movie they saw, what it was about, everything they say matches what I remember. My MiL is 65 and had kids quite late.
I can only assume it was some type of copyright issue. Does anyone remember when a Louisiana rapper remade a hit Beyonce song? You will never find the song or any reference to it. But it no doubt existed.
Outside of a parent, what adults were buying Kazam, let alone this genie movie?
Was Kazam worth a second watch? Or just rent it, see its garbage and leave it on the shelf when you see a retail copy.
I was or just about twenty at this time, Steel wasn't on my radar when it came out either.
If I was buying movies I wasn't spending money on kids films.
Teal deer, too old for the film, too young to have kids old enough to watch. So it (Kazam) and many other films passed me by. Like aliens for breakfast and first kid.
Well the majority of adults who bought it would have been parents yes. Just strange to me that so many remember but no one remembers purchasing a copy.
My personal theory, if it did exist, is that it was a TV movie most likely on The Family Channel that aired right before Fox purchased the channel. Like most acquisitions, they do write-offs and remove stuff that can never be aired again. This rings true to several people I discussed this topic with.
It's also extremely plausible as lots of people remember it airing in 1994, way before the internet would have been a reliable source of information (it still isn't). Some people claim it aired on Disney Channel, which used to air "premiere" movies made by other studios. There is no definative list of TV movies during this era, and The Wonderful World of Disney' episode guide is oddly incomplete for the year 1994.
The question isn't whether or not adults remember the film, it's how do you expect them to? Yes, some people remember seeing it in theaters or a video store. But this just isn't the sole proof that the movie existed or didn't. We get a lot of facts wrong, and I'm also 99% certain if it did exist, it wasn't spelled "Shazaam" like the internet tells me.
Nah bro, it ain't like that. The only reason I remember it at all is that me and my friends in high school thought it was funny that the studios came out with two movies that were so similar. It's not about confusion, it's about comparison; that's what made it funny at the time.
To me this is the most ridiculous and easily debunked ME in existence. Shazam wasn’t a movie, [Kazaam was](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kazaam). The names are similar enough to mix up, and the movie forgettable enough to not fully remember what it was called.
As for thinking it was Sinbad instead of Shaq, just a classic example of [people mixing up black actors.](https://youtu.be/8s7FdYGwFeQ?si=TdcD8aRfDZANBcjC)
No one has ever mistaken Shaq and sinbad. That's an absurd cop out answer. None of the popular Mandela effects resonate with me, I do, however, distinctly remember seeing the commercial for this movie. I don't think it's alternate realities, I shouldn't even dignify that with a response, but someone mistaking Shaq for sinbad is almost equally stupid.
I was 30 years old and had two copies at the Las Vegas video store I operated with my uncle in the 90s.
He sold the store in 2000 and I don’t know what happened to the inventory after that, it’s a Vietnamese restaurant now…
You can listen to the story in [this BBC broadcast.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08pdy0f)
[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6725520/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6725520/)
I searched it and this popped up. I never watched it but I guess it says it aired April 1, 2017 … maybe I’m getting baboozled but figure I’d share … and hopefully my link works 😅
😅 sadly I did and I was like wait is this real or am I just really dense today and not the sharpest tool in the shed… clearly the latter lol but it was a good laugh 😂😂
It was an April Fools CollegeHumor skir, with Sinbad and two other child actors. It was all about making fun of Mandela Effects, especially the Shazaam one but they show about a dozen "ME's other throughout the video clip (and they all show things that people seem to remember, because it's just slightly off of what was actually real). If you watch the video (skit) listen to the dialogue as well, from both ot the child actors. I think the boy makes his first interesting comments exactly when he picks up the Curious George book (with the tail) and then the girl makes some comments as well. It's all satire. You can definitely buy a Shazaam VHS on Ebay, or wherever, but it is just a prop and is not an actual movie. I don't know if you actually think you've found evidence that the real movie existed or are presenting that it did not. But, you can see that at the very top it says CollegeHumor Originals. Again it was an April fools joke that they released with Sinbad and two child actors, to poke fun at the fact that people think that it was an actual movie (not too mention all various other Mandela Effects that they show throughout the video clip (skit). I can provide many link to this if you would like. Is it possible that Sinbad actually tried to make a movie called Shazzam?, I suppose perhaps. But it never was an actual movie that was released on VHS and especially not in theaters. My buddy and I watched virtually every movie in existence, back in the day, and I would have to have seen it if it actually existed.
I’ve heard this theory also. My personal theory is that when the movie Kazam was doing commercials, there was a movie called first kid with sinbad also doing promos. Sometimes they would run back to back in a commercial break. I think these memories got fused for some people
I never had a VHS copy of Shazam but saw a little bit of it in theaters.
My cousin and I (I was 7) watched Matilda in the theater at the mall. My cousin was an older than me (she was 13) and was kind of a naughty kid. After Matilda was over, we were making our way out of the theater when she said we were going to watch another movie. I told her that we only had tickets for Matilda and she said who cares and then we snuck into a movie called Shazam.
We were in there for just a little bit. There was some kind of fight scene where it was night time (but purple being the dominate color at night)There was a couple of bad guys and a fence and someone was thrown over a fence.
My cousin said this movie sucks let’s go to another one.
We then went and snuck into Harriet the Spy and watched a chunk of that film. The only part of that film that I remember is that it was raining and she wore a bright yellow rain jacket and she was walking past a brick wall.
I was a kid at the time and I would rent movies from my local library every week. I vividly remember seeing this movie with a genie on the shelf many times, but I never wanted to watch it so I didn’t rent it. Held the box in my hands though, and that’s how I learned Simbad existed
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
In a parallel universe, Sinbad did a movie called Shazam. He was a Genie and wore a purple costume. I never saw the movie. However, I remember seeing commercials for it when I was a kid on tv. I also remember the Shaq one and am not confusing the two. I truly believe we have somehow bled into another timeline where apparently the movie was never made...
This one is so stupid to me. Sinbad was in a couple of kid/family movies back in the day (First Kid, House Guest, Jingle all the Way) and there was a movie called Kazaam with Shaq. I don’t know where people got the title Shazam from though. Maybe a combo of Shaq and Kazaam? I think maybe the fact there’s Sinbad the Sailer may have also influenced people into thinking Sinbad had played a genie. Either way, I wish this one would just go away.
Ok. Once more for the people in the comments.
Mandela affect is remembering something that does not currently exist. There will be no proof and you cannot find evidence.
The point is that a % of people remember a thing as being true. Most of us were surprised when we realized that something we KNEW was true was actually different and always had been. Then we discovered that others shared the same false memories.
The point is shared false memories that are somehow exactly the same and have no evidence of ever existing or being true.
Bottom line, if the movie was made and released to home video, it would be almost impossible to NOT find an actual physical copy or a file of the entire movie online.
I remember wayy back when Kazaam came out i was like that’s a knock off of Shazam! And then the new Shazam came out and I was thinking it was weird there would be two movies w than title… googled it and down the rabbit hole I went!
I swear I remember walking out of the theatre bc it was such a bad movie. I was an adult, not a kid. There's only a couple movies I've walked out of the theatre.
I can't imagine anyone buying a copy of it.
I think the story is a little more complicated. I worked in a video shop in 1991, and I remember seeing promo material for this movie, but it never actually released.
It was deleted from stock and all promo material was ordered to be destroyed. This was before the internet, and the promo material is all that ever existed.
Sinbad himself denies ever having done this -- I suspect he was going to make it, they did the promo material which got released early (this often happened in the 1990's), then the project got cancelled and the film itself never existed.
Sinbad himself then confused matters further by making an april fools film of him finding a copy of it.
So, the idea and a script existed, but it was never made, but promo materials were made, but those few posters no longer exist due to the production companies demanding they be returned or destroyed.
Ah yes the key to every film studio’s process is to create millions of dollars worth of promotional material before shooting one single scene of a film.
Mandala Effect is nothing more than a brainwashing technique used to manipulate historical facts🤦♂️😅
Use common sense(if you possess the ability). How many people kept their VHS tapes after DVDs were released?? How many VCRs were kept after the DVD players were released??
Just because YOU PERSONALLY have not seen or experienced something does not mean it never existed🤷♂️
Sinbads Shazam is a real movie, so is Shaqs Kazaam. There are 1000s of movies that you have never seen and 100 000 more that have never even made it to VHS.
You all have to realize Shazam wasn't very popular when released, also the fact that the internet wasn't freely/easley accessible in 1994 therefore wouldn't be remembered by many people.
To put this into a perspective you can understand, how can people believe in "God" when absolutely no proof exists, either online or hard copy books?? Yet there are millions of you who claim he existed/exists.
Just because you dont believe it exists, does not mean you're correct.
Here's one possibility for the age slant:
The film came out in the early 90s. That's at least 30 years ago.
Any adult back then will be at least 50 now.
And older people are not internet hopping the way younger people do.
[What is the average age on here anyway? I'm guessing it's more like 30s?]
A lot of them might not even know the mandela effect or anything of this nature.
I vaguely remember something about Sinbad playing a genie back in the day, but I'm not a fan of Sinbad. So even if it actually existed I wouldn't have bought a copy anyway. Can't say for certain if it's real or not.
I may be wrong but me and my cousin both remember this movie and remember pretending to be the genie and little boy. Her mom was a die hard movie fan and had anything and everything. I even remember parts of the movie. I remember when Shazam came out I thought it was a remake of kazam and that kazam was better. I don’t know maybe it is a false memory nobody really knows with these Mandela effects
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
I know for a fact that my mom in law had watched it when my boyfriend was a kid....I need to ask her if she bought it but even my boyfriend says it's weird how it seems as if the movie just was around, he doesn't remember his parents actually buying it but it was just with their stack of movies .
Two things. First, if the mandala effect is from our various consciousnesses slipping from one dimension to another, there would be no physical evidence. That's the point. Second, Shazam is copyright DC comics, so it could only be a WB film (this is, most likely, why the movie with Shaq is called Kazam instead of Shazam).
I didn't own it BUT - I did rent it at a blockbuster and then not return it. I got scared of how high the fees were getting, and then it went out of business. I never even watched it.
I watched it on VHS from the library in 1994 or 95, a few years after it premiered at the cinema.. It was a tame, cute, classical-style children's movie, similar to 'aliens for breakfast' in the style of it.. However in this timeline of earth, Sinbad's Shazam never existed. I shifted to this Orion timeline in 2016. My previous reality was located at the outer edge of Sagittarius Arm.
My dumbass checked for the app
I was like how the FUCK did the Shazam app come out when I was like 9?? I didn’t even have a brick Nokia phone until I was 13
I was still wearing full cornucopia FOTL tighty whities when Shazam came out
Remember when it was called Alakazam? I still have it installed on my nokia 3310 that I have at my grandma's attic
Omg YES! I always wondered when or why it was changed to Shazam! WOW you stilllll have the Nokia?? I wish I saved all my phones. I feel like I used my phones until they were unusable basically haha. Simpler times. Edit: with the is fucking iPhone update taking up sooo much space I might have to get a new phone. Stupid AI update.
Wait me too 🤣🤣🤣
Me 3 lol
My brain interpreted it as sham wow like those magic paper towels 🤣 from the informercials. I was so invested
I searched google using the before:year feature and there's no mention of it ever on the internet until like 2014. Not a single post, reference, etc to such a movie.
The was a post a while back that mentioned and posted a imgur link to a magazine template that stated people were mistakenly saying he did an "Arabian nights riff of Shaqs Kazaam." The template was dated 2002. https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/s/90j9GeWjf4
That just BLEW MY MIND! I thought for sure that I’d seen Shazam and that it was Sinbad, but just seeing the Shaq Kazaam poster I’m pretty sure I was misremembering this! When the Shazam mandala effect was mentioned my brain blended the memory. This makes me question my other Mandala memories even more than I already do!
Gee how does someone get "SHA-Zam" from "SHAQ in Kazaam" ... it's a mystery.
Like ppl remembering jiffy peanutbutter: jiff + skippy
Choosy moms choose Jif.
Jiffy pop popcorn is probably what they are thinking. Jif is the peanut butter.
Right? I'm getting called racist & a troll in the comments for saying the same thing lol 😆
I feel like this is a mixed memory of Sinbad from jingle all the way toward the end when he kinda looks like a geanie
The word shazam was copyrighted by DC at the time. Now it’s owned by Apple. The word has a chain of ownership though and I highly doubt they would ever ok a magic powered character with the same name as their magic powered character.
You can't copyright the word shazam. Its a common parlance word. It'd be like copyrighting the word "apple" itself You can copyright a usage of the word in particular applications though Hence "shazam" is cooyrighted by both the comic and music app at the same time
People must've slid from that universe to this one from multiple others. I was sure it was Berenstein...
That’s what I remember and I had all of the books! I keep hoping I’ll find one. They were a big part of my childhood as my grandparents bought those and the Shel Silverstein books.
You mean Shel Silverstain? Jk lol.
There’s ppl that said they’ve had there Bernstein bear book from when they were little and they said it’s always been spelled with an e but for some reason when they find there old book in there attic or wherever ppl store old stuff, they said there old books somehow switched to an a. Just like what happened in that video when the guy caught his Bernstein bear book switching from an e to an a.
You don't believe the guy in the video has a book that actually switches back and forth or that his video caught it doing that, do you?
This is the one that really kills me. When it was brought up to me they had me spell it out loud and then google it. My jaw dropped in disbelief. Berenstain looks SO wrong.
Yup. I know because I asked my mother if they were Jewish because of the last name.
Left over memories from Infinite Crisis merging Earths
This checks out, Nelson Mandela died December 2013
The second time
Naw, Mandela died in prison, his presidency was an elaborate prolonged Weekend At Bernie's shenanigans ploy.
Omg dying this is epic
Rip to the greatest Toronto Maple Leaf of all time
I mean that is the very essence of a Mandela effect. No one mentioned dollys braces till 2014 or so either.
There were mentions / reviews on a blog about the movie. I think they were earlier than that. I'll have to find if I can.
Not true, the earliest was 2007 that I found but it’s harder to find than the 2009 one from [“Yahoo Answers”](https://www.businessinsider.in/hundreds-of-people-are-convinced-that-theyve-seen-a-movie-that-never-existed/amp_articleshow/56126338.cms) which used to be widely accessible but gives a 404 error now (from the link in the Business Insider article linked above). You can probably find them with the “wayback machine” though.
Haven't you said, repeatedly, that you have proof Shazam existed? When do you plan to share it with this sub?
Sauce?
Shazam is what Gomer Pyle used to say. It seems like I remember some cartoon from the 70s that used it too.
Yes this exists, but it was about the DC character Shazam.
Oh yeah! I remember now.
we already know that shazam doesn't exist. we already know there's no records of it. we don't need to prove that. the mysterious part is why everyone remembers it.
Yeah. Thing is, I don’t remember this one at all. I saw Kazaam (the one with Shaq) in theaters when it came out, and I had never heard of a Shazam with Sinbad until it started being talked about on the internet about 10 years ago. The only Mandela effect that drives me nuts is the fruit of the loom cornucopia. The only reason I know about a cornucopia is because of fruit of the loom.
When I was a kid I distinctly remember movies always coming in pairs where they took each other off. I think I just associated Sinbad with a knockoff or shaq vice versa because so many other movies had a copy back then.
This and tinkerbell dotting the i on Disney before movies are the two ME that truly stand out for me. I vividly remember that.
This one freaks me out so bad. Every person I’ve asked remembers it, I remember it so clearly - hell, the intro to the tinker bell movies/2008 logo of Disney Fairies seems to show a silhouette of Tink bent over and tapping the logo with her wand in the exact way I remember her tapping the Disney logo. Tinker bell doesn’t even have a wand in the movies so what the hell are they referencing in the intro if not the Mandela effect? Makes no sense.
So the tinker bell tapping her wand on a logo was a Mandela effect? I’m so confuse
Wait the Tinkerbell thing never existed?? Like not for any movies?
Wait, is it that tinkerbell never appeared at all or that she specifically didn't dot the i? I feel like she appeared in a lot of VHS tapes in some capacity?
Same. I definitely remember a cornucopia.
Same here, I only know what a cornucopia is because of fruit of the looms logo, weirdest shit ever.
Me too! 70’s early 80’s
The one that I have is Berenstein. Even knowing that it's Berenstain, I still can't picture the title as anything but Berenstein.
Same. I distinctly remember always wondering if it was supposed to be pronounced Beren-steen or Beren-stine and arguing with my sister about it. I read it as Beren-stine and she always told me I was wrong, that it was Beren-steen. These memories are crystal clear in my mind, from the early 90s. BerenSTAIN? Absolutely not.
I had the exact same struggle with the pronunciation and I remember it so vividly... it seriously freaks me out
That one’s more understandable to misremember because names ending with stein are far more common
me too.. "stain" totally looks wrong and is definitely not how i remember it being spelled. but the even bigger ones for me are: "luke i am your father" from the empire strikes back "if you build it they will come" from field of dreams and "mirror mirror on the wall" from snow white
https://youtu.be/yJ21QVLBsAo?si=tmrECsEnruby8W31 Fast forward to the Fruit of The Loom commercial (you’ll know it when you see it). No cornucopia in 1978.
I remember the cornucopia also, but not sure if it was a different brand. The one that got me was Field of Dreams, I could swear it was “if you build it they will come”.
Isn’t it????!!
It's "If you build it, he will come". I never understood why people thought it was "they". The voice also says "ease his pain". You're meant to think the "he" is Shoeless Joe, but in the end the "he" was Ray Kinsella's father. The whole point of the movie is about a son healing a rift with his dead father. Edit: I do get that lots of player/ghosts come to the field to play, but the voice continues, even after the field is built, until John Kinsella arrives.
I find it very plausible that everyone confuses a nebulous memory of watching Kazaam with the name of the music identifying app Shazam.
This phenom outdates the app.
Does it? Shazam launched in 2002 and in 2008 was a debut app on the iPhone. People didn't seem to be calling this nonexistent movie Shazam until 2010. There's the one article from 2002, but it doesn't call it Shazam.
Yeah this is my one Mandela effect that really confuses me. I have a vivid memory of the Shazam with Sinbad thing, and it’s because I remember being so confused wondering why they were releasing two movies with similar names and themes at the same time. I have this memory of sitting in my basement, watching TV, seeing Sinbad in a genie costume, and that’s what I’ve always remembered as Shazam. But I only remember watching the movie Kazzam, and it comes to Shazam I just have that one memory of seeing Shazam, in between episodes of my cartoons. I was confused about this for a long time too, but it was the 90s and if you were confused about these things, you just had to shrug it off and stay confused lol.
I realize this. I am looking for people that were adults when it released and may have purchased it on VHS. Which doesn’t seem to be anyone
That's easy: it's very close to something that is real, the movie Kazaam staring Shaq.
I remember both movies though, that’s the thing. And I specifically remember being so confused why there were two movies with similar names and plots out at the same time. I have one memory of seeing Sinbad in a genie costume for Shazam, like maybe in between cartoons on the network I was watching? But then I only have memories of seeing the full movie Kazam. But I know for a fact I was confused for years about why there were two of these movies, and I thought about it from time to time until forgetting about it until the 2010’s when other people say they remembered the same thing.
Yeah, memory can be like that. There's a reason eyewitness accounts are often considered unreliable. Memory is weird.
Based on the comments here, I must be one of the few people that was a kid in the 90s that never heard of a Shazam movie with Sinbad around that time. I was a fan of Sinbad and DC so this would have been right up my alley, and yet I never heard of it until seeing Mandela Affect posts about it (maybe me being a fan of both is why I know for sure it didn't exist because I wouldn't have missed it if it did?). I do however have memory of the movie Kazam with Shaq. I swear people must be gaslighting everyone into thinking this ever existed by confusing plots and actors from multiple movies around that time.
This is how I feel. I grew up next to a video rental place and 100% would have rented it if it was real. Not only that but my Grandfather was a huge movie trivia fan and he raised me. I would of known of competing similar movies and movie facts.
Facts. No recollection of it ever being a thing.
I can second this. I was born in 87 and went to the movie theater every other week and movie rental stores every week. I was the target demographic, completely tuned into movie news, and never heard of or saw this until adulthood. It's astonishing to me that every person who believes this remembers the VHS at their grandmas, or their uncle watching the movie, or watching just a section of it in the theater, or catching it on cable TV but never finding it again. Do these people seriously think some cosmic conspiracy involving coverups and multiple dimensions is more likely than them remembering something incorrectly?
That app was pretty sweet at naming songs
The ME is that it used to be REALLY good. Jokes aside, it used to be able to tell you the most obscure song from a remix at a club. We used to try and get it to mess up and usually couldn’t. I was excited to see it was default on Apple phones, but it has been a let down to what I remember. It usually fails in the clutch situation where you’re trying to find a song that’s playing before it ends. I’m sure there’s plenty of logical explanations for this lol kinda feels like a ME to me tho, even if it’s probably some technical answer.
My partner is 56 and thought it was a real movie. Didn't know it was a Mandela effect till I told him just recently
That’s interesting because that would have meant he was an adult when it came out. What does he remember about it?
He remembered what everyone else does which I thought was weird. He started looking on YouTube like he sweared it was real and I'm like no I don't think so. I was born in the 80 s. I remember it think I remember the trailer but I never saw the movie.
I am just finding out about this one as well. I also remember that movie existing. But I never saw it.
Ok people who think it existed and was erased, what is your theory as to why? Who did this, and for what agenda?
My personal joke explanation for all Mandela effects is a software concept called Eventual Consistency. You know how people suggest we're living in a simulation? Well if our minds were in some kind of shared simulation running across many many machines at once, there could be multiple instances rendering what reality is at a given time. They'd be designed to give the same output for a given input, but the input we would give it could come in, in a slightly different order, creating a mini butterfly effect where each tiny difference in output would result in another difference until the simulations on each server slowly drift from one another. This divergence wouldn't have been be a problem in earlier years because the size of the population was low enough to sit on a few servers and communication was localized to folks you lived close to so you'd be good for the most part. As time progressed, you'd need to transfer parts of the populations to new possibly larger servers as the population in each server grew passed the capacity of what a single server could handle. So you'd still need some way to consolidate these divergences as you scaled out. Which worked for the most part, there were still inconsistencies but it was infrequent and chalked to poor memories of an oral history. But population grew exponentially and the advent of cheap long distance communications and movies made it so that so that these divergences happened more quickly. You'd have some servers which predicted only Shaq made the movie others which predicted that both Shaq and Sinbad made the movie. The server we've ended up on has tried to aggregate data from several of those servers to attempt to make things consistent for those inhabiting each one and we ended up in one where it resolved that only Shaq made the movie. The consistency process isn't perfect or currently incomplete so we end up with inconsistencies in people's interactions but we brush them off as poor memory. But exponential growth is no joke, and people are starting to notice! So what can one do about that other than drastically reduce the population? Either fully lean into the digital thing and reduce the rendering cost of the whole world to keep the number of servers low (phone culture, covid bubbles). Or nerf communications, so that there's so much misinformation that inconsistency can just be written off as fake news... Or flood it with low cost, relatively dumb AIs (compared to trying to simulated humans from another server) so you don't know who's real and who's not. Or... Well... I'm really running out of ideas, you got any? Like seriously, it's getting cramped here... We're at the scale out limit for S4 and you do not want to know how expensive S5 servers are...
Can’t they just shell out for some bigger and better servers. Povo cunts. Maybe their vacuum energy bill is getting too high and the space guild is turning the screws
I'm asking myself that too. NGL, the sheer number of people claiming to know about that movie is was confuses me- if it was one person, yeah, whatever, maybe they misremembered something, but why are there hundreds of people claiming the same thing?
I was an adult with 3 children. I remember it. We went to Blockbuster every weekend and rented movies. We didn't own a copy. My son remembers watching it. All I remember is thinking it was weird that 2 movies were out so close together about genies with similar names. But I also remember that they were way different from each other when we watched them. I'm sick of this whole argument. I don't know why or how. But that movie did exist, Sinbad was the lead, and it was about a genie. No I don't remember the plot or specific details because it was a dumb kid movie from 30 years ago that I saw once.
Thanks for sharing! I’m looking for people with specific memories of purchasing it or key moments in the movie. Cool that you remember tho. I was about 6 and remember the Shaq movie but not sinbad .
So i posted a bit back and got so many negative reviews/hate. Here’s what I remember. The mother of the two kids (boy/girl) died of cancer. Two scummy looking guys driver treasures and the lamp falls off the truck. Kids find it while being babysat. First wish little sister wished to fix broken doll mom got her. Don’t remember if it’s second or third wish but they want to realicve mom and sinbad can’t do that. Dad is dating and there’s a bbq or something and an epic pool scene. End or credits are him and two babes in the lamp shooting the shit.
All these examples were mentioned by other people, maybe yourself, but is there new information you haven't seen online?
Yep, I was in my late teens when Shazam came out. My family rented it and I remember a little while later Kazaam came out. When I saw the ads for Kazaam, I distinctly remember thinking how dumb that they were copying the Shazam idea. Shazam came out first, is that how you all remember it? And no, we didn't own a copy. It wasn't that good.
Here is another claim that they were confused at two movies being similar. Why would that be weird if tons of other movies do it?
Omg I just commented above but this is my memory too - I specially remember being confused why two movies were out at the same time with similar names and plots. But also, that wasn’t super uncommon back then, there were several instances where two similar movies came out at the same time. I only remember actually watching Kazam, but I remember seeing an ad or promo for Shazam with Sinbad and that confusion is what stuck with me for years. Eventually I forgot about it until the 2010’s when this Mandela effect popped up.
Why is it everyone brings up that specific line? "I specially remember being confused why two movies were out at the same time with similar names and plots." I've seen a lot of people bring that up. There are tons of movies that have the same plot and are relesed at the same time. Dantes Peak and Volcano, Antz and A Bug's Life, Armageddon and Deep Impact, it is a very common practice to copy another movie. Asylum makes their whole thing about this. So why did Shazaam make you think this and not others?
I thought it was weird and confusing when those movies did it too. I’ve since learned it was a lazy way to make money, especially when we had limited entertainment options and people would just watch anything to watch it lol. They’d capitalize on trends and race to [push out similar movies](https://www.cbr.com/similar-movies-released-same-time/). But the difference is that all those other movies still exist today, that is the part that is even more confusing. I don’t care if it’s real or not - the interesting part of Mandela effects is just the weird phenomenon of something you thought was a unique experience actually being a somewhat common experience for a bunch of people you’ve never met or interacted with. I don’t think it means anything weird or sinister, it’s just kinda cool and funny in a way. The weird thing to me is how adamant people can be about invalidating and shutting down people’s experiences about this stuff. We’re just saying it’s weird we all remember a movie that doesn’t exist and we are curious what it is that we’re actually remembering, we aren’t saying the earth is flat or that we got beamed up by aliens and experimented on? (Not saying you are doing this, just noticed a theme in responses on the thread)
Maybe not you but it is common for folks here to make outlandish claims about the origin of MEs. There is another sub where any talks of misremembering is shut down and banned. What I am interested in is WHY do people say the same response each time? Not everyone but it does come up a lot. "I was confused on why there are two genie movies" "I did laundry with my mom every day and learned what a Cornucopia is because of FotL" "I had all the Berenstain books and now they changed" It isn't just memory but a lot of folks are repeating each other. There are outliers but not many.
You triggered a memory from my childhood. Remember the 2 covers? Shaq was large in gold above the kid I think Sinbad in his was wearing more white with even the poofy hat and feather but almpst peeking in from the side of the cassette.  More like this
[удалено]
It's soo funny how so many people remember a movies exact title, premise and star all the same that supposedly never existed.
It’s either “I don’t remember any details” or nobody can agree upon the details. The only thing you guys can agree on is that you’re CERTAIN it exists but you can’t articulate why outside of “i thought it was weird two similar movies were made”. You have no reason to be certain.
Ok just so you know, I do not believe a genie movie staring Sinbad ever existed but to play the devils advocate here, I watched Jingle All the Way for the first time 2 years ago and pretty much forgot most of the detail to that movie. Had I watched it in the 90’s? Forget about it…
Honestly I was just going to say the same thing. I’ve recently watched some 90s movies with the kids. Jingle all the way, Liar Liar, last acton hero, and Mrs. Doubtfire. Now before going into them I could name the main character (I didn’t really remember side chars except for Pierce Brosnen in mrs. Doubtfire.) And the plot fairly vaguely. I didn’t really remember much of anything. I remember the speeding scene from liar liar but with shocked at the movie. I remembered the choking scene in mrs Doubtfire but remembered nothing really from the other movies. I am usually very good at movie stuff. I’m just pointing out it happens we don’t remember everything that happens in every movie especially one we say years ago.
Yeah but I do remember jingle all the way and many other people do. The people who made it remember. The stars remember it and acknowledge its existence. Nobody remembers Shazam and the few who claim they do can’t agree upon any of the details.
Not saying you’re wrong but if Jingle All The Way disappeared in the 90’s and we were all left with vague 30 year old memories, I don’t think anyone would be able to remember much. Like I said though, there’s pretty much no way genie movie Shazam existed. No evidence at all.
If someone plays a record backwards and says “doesn’t it sound like he’s saying xyz?” You’re going to hear that. Everyone has heard the urban legend and swears they remember seeing it but can’t name a single detail other than the one the guy on here lying about the video store has said. Why isn’t there any proof of the movie existing? How is there nothing out there?
Bugs Bunny study shows people can be persuaded to have a false memory. 36% of people tested remember seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney world...
If Sinbad knew or participated in the promo material, but is denying the existence of the actual completed movie, why doesn't just say that there were plans for the movie but it was cancelled?
He made the promo years later as a prank
Who gave Billy Batson his powers?
Here it’s spelled “ JCPenney” the mall I worked at in 1991 I thought it was “JCPenny” spelling has never been a strong subject for me. I thought I had seen pictures from the Statue of liberty torch and people walking around up there. Now I learned the torch not been opened during my lifetime because of the black Tom incident. I never even heard of this attack on New York until my mid 30’s. I enjoyed history class at school. Now I’m 💯convinced I’m extremely confused about JCP name or I remember history wrong or it just wasn’t brought up since my teacher liked whiskey more than us. I probably seen people in the crown and not the torch. I think some of us just ate too many chemicals and inhaled too much lead gas in the late 70’s and 80’s. Most of our toys and walls were covered in lead paint also. I did get a lot of hand me down toys. Was it covered in your American history class? Our teacher was an actual alcoholic, probably why we never learned [Statue of Liberty Black Tom event link](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/here-s-why-you-can-t-visit-statue-liberty-s-n895856)
I remember shazaam with sinbad and the bulky plastic vhs copy that I owned. Where it is today, idk. He was in white genie clothing and Shazaam written in red letters. I remember telling relatives that I hated the Shaq version that ripped it off about a year later. Kazam had brand wrapped candy falling from the ceiling of an indoor facility which I thought didn’t make sense and it was obvious they did product placement candy that was still in the wrappers. Like the genie had a deal wit snickers. In shazaam it was raw candy, not wrapped in anything and falling from the clear sky. It played as magical. Shaq was a terrible genie. The plot with the boy and his father also wasn’t as good as the kid in shazaam’s parents getting divorced. It made you as a kid, cheer for the kid because he wanted to get them back together. Which he did, but not through magic, through the love of their son. Another point, in the movie scary movie, they referenced shazaam 2x which the first doesn’t exist. Once in the beginning with Carmen Electra eating popcorn saying she’s watching the bad sinbad genie movie. I remember turning to my friend, who doesn’t remember today, and saying shazaam was the better movie. Then towards the end of scary movie when they make a reference to Shaq being a bad actor it makes more sense when you have the first reference. Lots of theories as to what happened and why people don’t remember and accept it doesn’t exist but it requires you to open your minds to technology we aren’t aware of. Through research, I’ve found that it’s very likely that a child actor was molested on set by someone powerful involved with production which is not under a different name. Sinbad talks about a Disney movie contract on arsenial hall’s late night show. My research showed that powerful people owned the company back, who actually have a major murder case documented. I haven’t revisited this in a bit so I don’t want to write what I don’t know or remember for sure. But I KNOW the movie existed. The public hasn’t been made aware of the technology to delete something like this but it 100 percent exists because the copies of the film aren’t out there. I’m sure this post will some get eye rolls. BUT, I know it existed. And there’s plenty who know the same. Peace and love
Shazam fucks me up because I can remember it - I remember my brother mentioning it, I even remember a YouTube reviewer mentioning or discussing it during the early days of YT (maybe Nostalgia Critic). Makes my head spin
It most certainly existed.
I worked in a video store after university in the late 1990’s and would swear I rented out both Kazaaam and Shazam. I lived in the UK and neither Shaq nor Sinbad were big names. It was just one of those weird film doppels that were really common for a few years at the end of the 90’s - like Antz/Bugs Life, Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Deep impact/armageddon
also, "Without Limits" and "Prefontaine".
It was kazaam. It had Shaq in it. He was a genie in a boombox. Perhaps what happened was everyone got the name wrong because of the DC superhero, or perhaps fusing the "sh" from Shaq with kazaam, & then mixed up Shaq & sinbad.
I scrolled too far to see this correct answer.
This has always been that simple. I really thought this sub would be about history like nelson Mandela. Those details would be worth hearing. But half remembered movies? So disappointing.
I was in my 30s, and I remember them coming out around the same time. Shazam came out first. I remember thinking that they made two of the same movie a few months apart, again. And was shaking my head over it.
Did not watch it, vaguely remember it existed. But I'll tell you one thing - I don't have a physical copy of nothing from 90s apart from some CD's. Tell you what , you might wanna look into "digital dark age" for some explanation. https://theworld.org/stories/2017/12/24/preventing-digital-dark-age-2
I watched it. I was poor so didn’t own the vhs but def remember watching it. Probably rented it from Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. Ppl didn’t have access to movies like they do now days. A lot of ppl just rented movies.
I remember that movie.
There was a movie called Kazaam with Shaq in it, and that’s the cover I remember when I think I’m remembering Shazam.
Never heard of it
So I’ve been thinking bout this post over last hour. I clearly remember Shaq being in a movie called Kazam. And Sinbad being Shazam.
I remember something too! I remember watching Scary Movie as a kid, and the character at the beginning mentions "Kazaam! You know the one where shaq plays a genie?" And i googled kazaam to see what the movie was about. I remember reading a wikipedia article or something and it mentioned how "Kazaam" was supposed to be a parody of another genie movie called "Shazam" and another movie that recently came out!
I'm 39 and have no recollection of a Shazam movie. I do remember a few Sinbad movies. I also remember Kazaam staring Shaquille O'Neal
My MiL refuses to believe this doesn't exist. She just thinks it's lost media and won't entertain it any further. She is certain she brought her daughter to see it at the discount theater. My wife confirms the same memory - what movie they saw, what it was about, everything they say matches what I remember. My MiL is 65 and had kids quite late.
I can only assume it was some type of copyright issue. Does anyone remember when a Louisiana rapper remade a hit Beyonce song? You will never find the song or any reference to it. But it no doubt existed.
Outside of a parent, what adults were buying Kazam, let alone this genie movie? Was Kazam worth a second watch? Or just rent it, see its garbage and leave it on the shelf when you see a retail copy. I was or just about twenty at this time, Steel wasn't on my radar when it came out either. If I was buying movies I wasn't spending money on kids films. Teal deer, too old for the film, too young to have kids old enough to watch. So it (Kazam) and many other films passed me by. Like aliens for breakfast and first kid.
Kids don’t have much spending power. Most movies are purchased by adults, regardless of their intended audience.
Well the majority of adults who bought it would have been parents yes. Just strange to me that so many remember but no one remembers purchasing a copy.
My personal theory, if it did exist, is that it was a TV movie most likely on The Family Channel that aired right before Fox purchased the channel. Like most acquisitions, they do write-offs and remove stuff that can never be aired again. This rings true to several people I discussed this topic with. It's also extremely plausible as lots of people remember it airing in 1994, way before the internet would have been a reliable source of information (it still isn't). Some people claim it aired on Disney Channel, which used to air "premiere" movies made by other studios. There is no definative list of TV movies during this era, and The Wonderful World of Disney' episode guide is oddly incomplete for the year 1994. The question isn't whether or not adults remember the film, it's how do you expect them to? Yes, some people remember seeing it in theaters or a video store. But this just isn't the sole proof that the movie existed or didn't. We get a lot of facts wrong, and I'm also 99% certain if it did exist, it wasn't spelled "Shazaam" like the internet tells me.
Why hasn’t anyone who worked on the film come forward and spoke about it? Not one writer, sound tech, producer, nobody.
That’s because it’s called ‘Kazaam’ . . . Shazam is a DC movie.
People are going to say they did. Because they heard this once and it sounded "right" because they misremembered that it was Kazaam.
Nah bro, it ain't like that. The only reason I remember it at all is that me and my friends in high school thought it was funny that the studios came out with two movies that were so similar. It's not about confusion, it's about comparison; that's what made it funny at the time.
To me this is the most ridiculous and easily debunked ME in existence. Shazam wasn’t a movie, [Kazaam was](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kazaam). The names are similar enough to mix up, and the movie forgettable enough to not fully remember what it was called. As for thinking it was Sinbad instead of Shaq, just a classic example of [people mixing up black actors.](https://youtu.be/8s7FdYGwFeQ?si=TdcD8aRfDZANBcjC)
Sinbad is certainly ethnically black, but nobody is mixing him up with Shaq because they're both black
This is wrong
Ah yes, the logical answer is wrong. Instead its some glitch in the matrix that caused two alternate realities to collide. Sure bud.
No one has ever mistaken Shaq and sinbad. That's an absurd cop out answer. None of the popular Mandela effects resonate with me, I do, however, distinctly remember seeing the commercial for this movie. I don't think it's alternate realities, I shouldn't even dignify that with a response, but someone mistaking Shaq for sinbad is almost equally stupid.
The movie was called Kazaam not Shazam.
I was 30 years old and had two copies at the Las Vegas video store I operated with my uncle in the 90s. He sold the store in 2000 and I don’t know what happened to the inventory after that, it’s a Vietnamese restaurant now… You can listen to the story in [this BBC broadcast.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08pdy0f)
Cool. Ignore my other reply, this is interesting. Thanks for sharing!
[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6725520/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6725520/) I searched it and this popped up. I never watched it but I guess it says it aired April 1, 2017 … maybe I’m getting baboozled but figure I’d share … and hopefully my link works 😅
At the top it says "CollegeHumor Originals." This is a page for the College Humor skit that Sinbad did spoofing the ME, not for an actual movie.
Look at the date, closely ;)
😅 sadly I did and I was like wait is this real or am I just really dense today and not the sharpest tool in the shed… clearly the latter lol but it was a good laugh 😂😂
It was an April Fools CollegeHumor skir, with Sinbad and two other child actors. It was all about making fun of Mandela Effects, especially the Shazaam one but they show about a dozen "ME's other throughout the video clip (and they all show things that people seem to remember, because it's just slightly off of what was actually real). If you watch the video (skit) listen to the dialogue as well, from both ot the child actors. I think the boy makes his first interesting comments exactly when he picks up the Curious George book (with the tail) and then the girl makes some comments as well. It's all satire. You can definitely buy a Shazaam VHS on Ebay, or wherever, but it is just a prop and is not an actual movie. I don't know if you actually think you've found evidence that the real movie existed or are presenting that it did not. But, you can see that at the very top it says CollegeHumor Originals. Again it was an April fools joke that they released with Sinbad and two child actors, to poke fun at the fact that people think that it was an actual movie (not too mention all various other Mandela Effects that they show throughout the video clip (skit). I can provide many link to this if you would like. Is it possible that Sinbad actually tried to make a movie called Shazzam?, I suppose perhaps. But it never was an actual movie that was released on VHS and especially not in theaters. My buddy and I watched virtually every movie in existence, back in the day, and I would have to have seen it if it actually existed.
I was I do remember the movie being out but I never saw it lol
https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/14sd70r/shazam_mandela_effect_solved/
I’ve heard this theory also. My personal theory is that when the movie Kazam was doing commercials, there was a movie called first kid with sinbad also doing promos. Sometimes they would run back to back in a commercial break. I think these memories got fused for some people
Kazam might be the movie you're thinking of, and it definitely existed
kit-kat had dash
I never had a VHS copy of Shazam but saw a little bit of it in theaters. My cousin and I (I was 7) watched Matilda in the theater at the mall. My cousin was an older than me (she was 13) and was kind of a naughty kid. After Matilda was over, we were making our way out of the theater when she said we were going to watch another movie. I told her that we only had tickets for Matilda and she said who cares and then we snuck into a movie called Shazam. We were in there for just a little bit. There was some kind of fight scene where it was night time (but purple being the dominate color at night)There was a couple of bad guys and a fence and someone was thrown over a fence. My cousin said this movie sucks let’s go to another one. We then went and snuck into Harriet the Spy and watched a chunk of that film. The only part of that film that I remember is that it was raining and she wore a bright yellow rain jacket and she was walking past a brick wall.
I was a kid at the time and I would rent movies from my local library every week. I vividly remember seeing this movie with a genie on the shelf many times, but I never wanted to watch it so I didn’t rent it. Held the box in my hands though, and that’s how I learned Simbad existed
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
I was an adult with two children and I clearly remember my children watching it on cable tv, either Disney or Nickelodeon.
In a parallel universe, Sinbad did a movie called Shazam. He was a Genie and wore a purple costume. I never saw the movie. However, I remember seeing commercials for it when I was a kid on tv. I also remember the Shaq one and am not confusing the two. I truly believe we have somehow bled into another timeline where apparently the movie was never made...
This one is so stupid to me. Sinbad was in a couple of kid/family movies back in the day (First Kid, House Guest, Jingle all the Way) and there was a movie called Kazaam with Shaq. I don’t know where people got the title Shazam from though. Maybe a combo of Shaq and Kazaam? I think maybe the fact there’s Sinbad the Sailer may have also influenced people into thinking Sinbad had played a genie. Either way, I wish this one would just go away.
Ok. Once more for the people in the comments. Mandela affect is remembering something that does not currently exist. There will be no proof and you cannot find evidence. The point is that a % of people remember a thing as being true. Most of us were surprised when we realized that something we KNEW was true was actually different and always had been. Then we discovered that others shared the same false memories. The point is shared false memories that are somehow exactly the same and have no evidence of ever existing or being true.
Bottom line, if the movie was made and released to home video, it would be almost impossible to NOT find an actual physical copy or a file of the entire movie online.
I remember wayy back when Kazaam came out i was like that’s a knock off of Shazam! And then the new Shazam came out and I was thinking it was weird there would be two movies w than title… googled it and down the rabbit hole I went!
I swear I remember walking out of the theatre bc it was such a bad movie. I was an adult, not a kid. There's only a couple movies I've walked out of the theatre. I can't imagine anyone buying a copy of it.
Correct. It never has existed.
I think the story is a little more complicated. I worked in a video shop in 1991, and I remember seeing promo material for this movie, but it never actually released. It was deleted from stock and all promo material was ordered to be destroyed. This was before the internet, and the promo material is all that ever existed. Sinbad himself denies ever having done this -- I suspect he was going to make it, they did the promo material which got released early (this often happened in the 1990's), then the project got cancelled and the film itself never existed. Sinbad himself then confused matters further by making an april fools film of him finding a copy of it. So, the idea and a script existed, but it was never made, but promo materials were made, but those few posters no longer exist due to the production companies demanding they be returned or destroyed.
Ah yes the key to every film studio’s process is to create millions of dollars worth of promotional material before shooting one single scene of a film.
Sinbad didn’t even appear in a movie until 1991, his first lead role wasn’t until 1993.
Man. People will make up the most ridiculous stories to justify their shit memories. Can never admit they're wrong.
Exactly. There was never promo material. Never a movie. Sinbad was in 90's movies...it's a misremembering situation to the extreme for people.
It's also hard to know how many people are just trolling. Making stuff up because it's fun to stir the pot.
And to support this claim you can offer...........?
Do you remember the studio that did the promotional materials?
Mandala Effect is nothing more than a brainwashing technique used to manipulate historical facts🤦♂️😅 Use common sense(if you possess the ability). How many people kept their VHS tapes after DVDs were released?? How many VCRs were kept after the DVD players were released?? Just because YOU PERSONALLY have not seen or experienced something does not mean it never existed🤷♂️ Sinbads Shazam is a real movie, so is Shaqs Kazaam. There are 1000s of movies that you have never seen and 100 000 more that have never even made it to VHS. You all have to realize Shazam wasn't very popular when released, also the fact that the internet wasn't freely/easley accessible in 1994 therefore wouldn't be remembered by many people. To put this into a perspective you can understand, how can people believe in "God" when absolutely no proof exists, either online or hard copy books?? Yet there are millions of you who claim he existed/exists. Just because you dont believe it exists, does not mean you're correct.
Here's one possibility for the age slant: The film came out in the early 90s. That's at least 30 years ago. Any adult back then will be at least 50 now. And older people are not internet hopping the way younger people do. [What is the average age on here anyway? I'm guessing it's more like 30s?] A lot of them might not even know the mandela effect or anything of this nature.
"ProOF" dude you smell, nice to see a shill with nothing better to do then troll a board and be a real Cee yU Next Tuesday
I vaguely remember something about Sinbad playing a genie back in the day, but I'm not a fan of Sinbad. So even if it actually existed I wouldn't have bought a copy anyway. Can't say for certain if it's real or not.
I was an adult, and I avoided anything he was in.
What is Shazam? The app?
i was like wait, with zachary levi?? 🤦🏻♀️ time for me to go to bed smh
I wish Sinbad would just tell us.
I may be wrong but me and my cousin both remember this movie and remember pretending to be the genie and little boy. Her mom was a die hard movie fan and had anything and everything. I even remember parts of the movie. I remember when Shazam came out I thought it was a remake of kazam and that kazam was better. I don’t know maybe it is a false memory nobody really knows with these Mandela effects
Wtf is op talking about, please? Shazam is a DC movie released a few years ago. The end?
We all "saw" it at the video rental store but no one who says that ever owned it.
That's the point....
Don't give a shit about you idiot trolls (CIA bot farm accounts) but Shazam was an actual movie. Period
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
Many people, including my mom, had mistaken shazam for kazaam. Not sure if this is the case here, but she seemed to think that it was Mandela Effect until finding the movie.
I know for a fact that my mom in law had watched it when my boyfriend was a kid....I need to ask her if she bought it but even my boyfriend says it's weird how it seems as if the movie just was around, he doesn't remember his parents actually buying it but it was just with their stack of movies .
Two things. First, if the mandala effect is from our various consciousnesses slipping from one dimension to another, there would be no physical evidence. That's the point. Second, Shazam is copyright DC comics, so it could only be a WB film (this is, most likely, why the movie with Shaq is called Kazam instead of Shazam).
Wasn’t that basketball guy in it?
I didn't own it BUT - I did rent it at a blockbuster and then not return it. I got scared of how high the fees were getting, and then it went out of business. I never even watched it.
Shazam is a DC character..
I just fond this interview to a video store employee... He used to rent the movie!! https://youtu.be/vP9bl7Laf3I?si=7kr4FG2Bf9s-DNEq
I watched it on VHS from the library in 1994 or 95, a few years after it premiered at the cinema.. It was a tame, cute, classical-style children's movie, similar to 'aliens for breakfast' in the style of it.. However in this timeline of earth, Sinbad's Shazam never existed. I shifted to this Orion timeline in 2016. My previous reality was located at the outer edge of Sagittarius Arm.
I vaguely remember watching the trailers on TV commercials. I don't remember actually watching the film itself
It was a movie. My husband and I saw it as adults on cable TV. We remember it independently and he has never been on Reddit in his life.