David Adkins, 67, is an actor and comedian who is best known by his stage name Sinbad.
He’s starred in films such as Jingle All The Way, Good Burger and Planes – he’s also had numerous HBO specials and his sitcom called The Sinbad Show.
Many of Sinbad’s fans are also convinced that he starred in a movie where he played a genie – except, he never did.
People have been taking to social media and discussing a film titled Shazaam, convinced that Sinbad plays a genie in the movie who goes on an adventure with two children.
So convinced that the film exists, one Reddit user has broken down the entire plot, saying he is certain it was delivered to his uncle’s video rental store.
“The lamp is rubbed for the first time by two kids – an early teen boy, and his little sister who looks to be around 5 years old or so in their living room by the fireplace while their single dad is out of the house running an errand,” he recalls.
“The boy rubs the lamp and ‘Sinbad’ appears with full genie attire…”
The thing is, the movie never actually existed… so why are people so convinced it’s real?
Well, there may be an answer.
In the annals of pop culture, few phenomena are as perplexing and intriguing as the Mandela Effect.
One particularly curious example of this phenomenon involves the American comedian Sinbad and a non-existent movie where he supposedly played a genie.
Despite numerous people vividly recalling this film, no such movie exists, and this realization continues to blow minds.
For some, the word ‘Sinbad’ makes them think of the popular 90s comedian, while for others it’s a fictional sailor who had adventures (sometimes involving genies) in the Middle East – people may have confused the two, as per Snopes.
In 1994, Sinbad also hosted a showing of the film Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.
Another explanation is that fans are misremembering details from another 90s movie titled Kazaam, in which Shaquille O’Neal played the role of a genie.
There’s also an image circulating online that has fooled many – at first glance, it appears to be a photo of Sinbad shirtless with his arms folded when actually, it’s WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero’s chest and arms, with Sinbad’s face digitally added on.
The misleading information doesn’t end there, as the website College Humor posted ‘lost footage’ of the supposed Shazaam movie on April Fool’s Day back in 2017.
Essentially, the whole Sinbad phenomenon is down to this ‘Mandela Effect’.
The Mandela Effect is a type of false memory that occurs when many different people incorrectly remember the same thing, according to Medical News Today.
The term comes from the claim that people remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, when in fact he died in 2013, as per Verywell Mind.
Experts in the field believe that it can be down to our brain’s tendency to create coherent narratives from fragmented information.
Cognitive and parapsychological researcher Neil Dagnall explains to CNN: “With the Mandela Effect, people are often remembering things the way they think they should be rather than they actually are – because we just process things very quickly in everyday life.”
