You may be surprised to know that your memory of the Queen saying "Mirror mirror" is wrong. She no longer casts a giant spell calling the Slave in the Mirror to her by saying "Mirror mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?" Instead she now says "Magic mirror on the wall- who is the fairest one of all?"
If you remember her saying "Mirror mirror" and so far that seems to be roughly 90% of people you're currently experiencing the Mandela Effect.
The Mandela Effect is the difference between recalled memory for groups of people and recorded history. I ran a survey that to date as received over 30k responses. When it reached over 25,000 I did a report about the results. The study included 7 questions suspected to have a Mandela Effect associated with them and 2 controls. The 2 controls showed that people who were extremely confident when answering questions about stuff from 20+ years ago were able to get it right 95% or more of the time. When scrubbing the survey results to narrow down just to extremely confident people who were asked about this effect 90.7% of people remember the line as "Mirror mirror."
You can see completely raw data here. The quiz is housed on two servers so the data comes in two parts. It has not been scrubbed by people admitting they guessed at this point.
I asked people to provide feedback about their responses. One quiz respondent added this detail- "i remember having a toy about snow white of a mirror and i still have it. im using it right now and she is saying ""mirror mirror on the wall"" not ""magic mirror on the wall"" my parents bought this in Disney WORLD."
Another person mentioned- " She was speaking to the MIRROR! I used to play around and use this phrase as a kid. Geez...I still used this phrase growing up. This one hit me pretty hard. I had never heard of Magic Mirror...and was blown away when I noticed the change. I will never agree that it was MAGIC mirror while I was growing up...ever. "
Here's one person where the line hit hard- "Well it was a kind of incantation both to bring the mirror to active state as well as gain an answer to a question she needed surety about... I have watched this with my daughter when she was younger and of course I had seen it when I was younger and am completely certain of the verbiage used... " I tend to agree as I remember it as an incantation, which makes sense as "Mirror, mirror" as opposed to a greeting towards an object, which would be "Magic mirror." Here's another along those lines- " I remember watching it. I remember repeating it, always wondering why the evil Queen could not think of anything better to say other than 'Mirror' twice. it made me think that perhaps it was part of the incantation, like saying 'mirror' twice would turn it on or something. "
The effect is witnessed in multiple languages- " I know I am correct, because I am from Serbia and I have heard this phrase in my own language. I watched this when I was a kid and I remember the line in my language which is a translation of 'Mirror, mirror....'. There's no way it was any different, l am 100% sure. Even now days, kids in my country will say 'Mirror, mirror....' because their parents taught them. I just went on YouTube to find the 'Show White' synchronized in my language and to my big surprise, all recent uploads say 'Magic mirror'! It was never like that! But, I have found one upload from 2010 where the narrator says 'Mirror, mirror...' in my language. Again, I am 100% sure it's 'Mirror, mirror...' , as we used to say it like a song, it's etched in my memory. "
In case you don't believe me that things have changed check out the footage below-
The most common immediate response from people unfamiliar with the Mandela Effect for these kind of results, especially when they aren't personally experiencing that specific Mandela Effect, is to dismiss the effect as nothing more than memory problems, collective mishearing, or the more sophisticated term of confabulation. It's a reasonable first response. There is lots of evidence even in my own survey results that the general population has extensive memory issues regarding events that took place 20+ years ago. The amazing thing though is that people that are extremely confident don't experience that gap. On one control in particular the people who were only moderately confident got it correct around 60% of the time where as the extremely confident got it right 95% of the time. So, yes, in general there is a broad memory problem, but in the group that usually has a distinct memory and thus feels extremely confident there isn't evidence of a memory problem.
Well, if it isn't memory then this thing called confabulation which is basically just having distorted memories is called out too. Here we get into a difficult problem. There is often evidence available that "old way" of the Mandela Effect actually did exist, even though recorded history says it does not. That's when researchers find what they call "Reality Residue." To Mandela Effect researchers it's evidence of a change. To Confabulists it's evidence of where the confusion came from in the first place.
To me the issue comes down to scale. I'm going to show lots of examples below of products, quotes, memes, and media lines that use the "Mirror mirror" line and some that use "Magic Mirror." The collective views of all of these things would likely come down to less than 1% of the lifetime views of the Disney movie, which adjusted for inflation is one of the top 10 most successful movies of all time. The idea that Will Smith misquoted the movie in 2 episodes of Fresh Prince lead an entire nation of people to misquote the line, especially after having researched the effect for over a year, seems ridiculous to me. While the opposite view that changes have occurred and it's evidence that the physical surrounding is malleable is also preposterous. I think that's why people have such a hard time believing the Mandela Effect could be real.
Here's a video of an assemblage of Mandela Effects. I've found and included some of the links within this movie below.
Here's an older version of a Looney Toons video that shows Magic Mirror, showing evidence that line has been used as well in other stuff.
Here's a classic from Saved by the Bell where they are doing a Snow White play. Note the line "Mirror Mirror"
Here's Maleficent where she does the "Mirror, mirror" incantation.
Here's Faerie Tale Theatre 13 reenactment of the scene
Here's a song that includes "Mirror mirror"
Here's an article from 2011 where The Telegraph use the "Mirror Mirror line.
Here's the episode of star trek from 1967 where the episode is called Mirror, Mirror
Here's a movie called Mirror Mirror from 2012.
Here's a children's book that has an allusion to the line in a story called The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang in 2009.
Here's your little buddy king in shrek dropping the line.
I'm not sure of the series here, but it's a recent take on the Snow White scene
Snow White and the Huntsman-
Here's the song Mirror Mirror, by Diamond Rio
Here's a video promo for Mirror MIrror: Once upon a Time
Here's will Smith in two episodes saying "Mirror Mirror"
One of the episodes of the Simpsons has him asking "Mirror Mirror on the wall who is the baldest of them all?"
Here's an article online from NBC News that actually seems to use the grammer from both lines of the movie.
Here's M2M singing "Mirror Mirror"
Here's a Disney Book where the words "Mirror Mirror" are used in the book
Here are two products that were manufactured where the line "Mirror Mirror" line is used.
Anyway, going back to the original problems, 90% remember the Line as Mirror Mirror and there is lots of evidence the line "Mirror Mirror" has been used all over the place along with the line "Magic Mirror." The question remains is the evidence gathered here indicate that reality has shifted and this is reality residue or does it indicate that mistakes were made in the past many times over and as a consequence of those mistakes people confuse what was originally and has always been Snow White and the Seven Little People (see what I did there :)
Here's me talking through this blog post-
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