10 Movie Scenes You Remember Totally Wrong

No, Tom Cruise doesn't wear glasses during THAT dance scene.

Morpheus The Matrix
Warner Bros.

If you're a big film buff, you've surely seen thousands of movies in your lifetime, enough that you can't be blamed for forgetting more about films than most "normal" people have ever watched.

But sometimes there's something a little weirder going on in a wider, collective sense, where viewers en masse have the same false memory of a movie scene.

We're of course getting into Mandela Effect territory here - a phenomenon where large numbers of people have the same incorrect account of a given situation, named after many reported believing that South African leader Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s.

In slightly more trivial terms it applies to movies, too, with many detailing unnervingly specific memories of film scenes that are in fact totally inaccurate.

Though some like to ascribe a paranormal explanation to this, it's ultimately merely a quirk of how the human brain makes associations and forms memories.

When it intersects with events witnessed by literally millions of people - like movies - it's just a matter of time before shared false memories come bubbling to the surface.

Moreover, in the age of social media it's easier than ever for the false memories to go viral and take on a life of their own...

10. The Lawyer Wasn't Going To The Bathroom When He Got Eaten - Jurassic Park

Morpheus The Matrix
Universal

It's practically impossible to forget the scene from Jurassic Park where lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) is eaten by the rampaging T-rex, yet for many, they remember Donald being devoured by the dino while taking an impromptu deuce with his trousers around his ankles.

Yet if you revisit the scene, this isn't the case at all, but one can at least appreciate where the confusion comes from.

For starters, Donald does flee from the T-rex by running into a portable bathroom nearby, and upon seeing this Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) comically quips, "When you gotta go, you gotta go."

For those who first saw Jurassic Park as kids, these two impressionable factors - combined with Donald wearing shorts and the understandable fight-or-flight terror of the situation - might explain why so many have misremembered him being mid-crap when he was picked up and swallowed by the dinosaur.

In reality he's just hiding in terror rather than actually attempting an emergency bowel evacuation, as believable as that might be were he still not wearing his shorts.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.