Experiences of the Mandela Effect with Dragon Ball

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Has anyone ever experienced the Mandela Effect (i.e. a false memory) with Dragon Ball?

I have one, as for years when I tried to remember watching the Big Green dub of the GT special I recalled Sean Schemmel's lines even though he didn't play Goku in that version of the special. This dub was lost for years, and when it surfaced I didn't remember David Gasman's lines as Goku even though part of me feels like I did see the special when it aired on Toonami UK back in 2005. I'm sure I saw the promo, which was also found years later as I did remember the opening line "In the distant future", but the dub of the special when it aired? That I'm not entirely sure about now.

[Kid Buu]

As a kid I swore Gohan and Krillin beat Guldo.

Then in 2010 I read the entire manga for the first time and was shocked to see Guldo was winning until Vegeta sucker punched him.

I even initially thought maybe the anime changed the result, but after rewatching the anime that year, turns out my memory had been playing tricks with me!

[VegettoEX]

I know this is a real "well umm actually Frankenstein was the CREATOR of the monster" kind of answer, but a "Mandela Effect" is when a large population all collectively have the same false memory — one person individually misremembering is just one person individually misremembering.

Some quintessential examples of this are a Shazaam movie starring Sinbad (which doesn't exist), Berenstein Bears instead of Berenstain Bears, and "Luke, I am your father" as a direct spoken line of dialog (it isn't).

One I've been meaning to look into for Dragon Ball is some kind of direct source quotation for "This isn't even my final form!" Obviously there are variations on that quote, but because I don't know the English dub's dialog like the back of my hand, I don't know for sure if Freeza(?) ever actually says that exact sentence word-for-word anywhere (and if so, if perhaps only in a video game).

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I know this is a real "well umm actually Frankenstein was the CREATOR of the monster" kind of answer, but a "Mandela Effect" is when a large population all collectively have the same false memory — one person individually misremembering is just one person individually misremembering.

That's fair enough, its not quite the same as my example, but I've heard that collectively there are a lot of UK/Irish fans that misremember the Cartoon Network UK, CNX and Toonami broadcasts of 2001-2005 where we had the Westwood dub for most of the series as having Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat for that portion of the series. I can't relate because I very much remember the Westwood dub, including the score, Kirby Morrow as Goku and Brian Drummond as Vegeta after Future Trunks arrives. I'm sure there are fans that saw the Funimation dub of the GT special more times than Big Green's dub, which they may have forgotten about if they were very young when they saw it.

[Kid Buu]

One collective misconception is that Yamcha never wins a fight and always dies. The Daizenshuu credits with a few wins and he doesn't die anymore than Goku does in the original manga. Might be more of a meme thing than a Mandela effect though.

[angeldreamZ004]

From personal experiences I can only recall thinking that Mirai Trunks' jacket was actually red when I was very young. I only realized it was blue when I played one of the videogames featuring him (either Tag Vs or Shin Budokai 2).
There are a few others too, like, I thought for years that Goku losing his memory was a Toei only thing, or that Bardock was never in the original manga. But I think these were actually me just not informing myself rather than misremembering.
The most recent one I recall is when I thought for some time that Black Freeza also lacked the purple parts over his shoulders like Golden did.

Edit: I just reminded of a very weird one I have for almost a decade already. For some reason I can vividly remember seeing a snail-like creature in the middle of the preview for Z episode 95. I don't know why and I can even remember very well how the snail looked like, it had a face very similar to the Planet Plant alien race from Episode of Bardock. It was 2018 and the first time I decided to watch everything Dragon Ball, so probably my mind played with me by creating a "original character" after watching that OVA and randomly placed it in Z 95 preview, and to this I still have that in my memory lol.

In response to what Mikex said, I think Dragon Ball has a lot of examples of collective cases with many people misremembering something about the series.
Many of them are covered in the website's rumor guide, things like Toriyama forgot about Lunch, Goku kissed or never kissed, Toriyama designed SSJ4 for GT and Mecha Freeza for Super DBZ, etc. Though some of them are just people spreading misinformatiom and not really misremembering I think.

Kid Buu mentioned in another thread that there are people who say that Kami taught Goku to never kill his opponents, and I think it's real as I also remember some people saying this, though this case I believe is more likely people creating their own explanations and presenting them as fact.

And since you enjoy dub / international airings related topics, I can recall two, one I got from a indian channel saying there was supposedly a hijacking on Cartoon Network during a airing of Dragon Ball in 2005 in Europe talking about a murder in Japan. I researched on that and it seems to be just a creepypasta created in 2024. So I'm not sure it's something that many people thought it was true.
Another one I know is that a news report of the 9/11 interrupted the airing of DBZ episode 245 (SSJ3's first appearance) in Brazil. I couldn't track the origin for this one, so it must be really old so I think it's a real case.

[The Dark Knight]

For me, at one point (like two decades ago) I was under the impression that Goku used Ssj2 against Cell because...I'm not sure, to be honest. I guess it was in one of the games and I assumed that was the case.

[The Monkey King]

I recently realised that a large amount of fans believe that Gohan punching Cell in the stomach is what made him throw up 18, when it was actually Gohan kicking him in the head that did it. I can kinda understand that because a punch in the stomach making someone throw up just makes sense.

Also I have a vague but persistent memory of Gohan facing off against Cell in the Cell Games arena, when I know that isn't possible because he destroyed it during his fight with Goku. That I can chalk up to video games effecting my memory.

[Tian]

There are still people who believe and claim that the Unmei No Hi song was kept in the LatAm Spanish dub.

When actually, it wasn't kept, it was removed and was replaced by nothing else than plain silence.

[Vegard Aune]

One collective misconception is that Yamcha never wins a fight and always dies. The Daizenshuu credits with a few wins and he doesn't die anymore than Goku does in the original manga. Might be more of a meme thing than a Mandela effect though.

I feel like it mostly stems from his completely botched hero moment against the Saibaimen where he gets to look cool for all of two seconds before abruptly getting killed. I mean, his death pose following that moment is perhaps the biggest meme. Couple this with his utter thrashing at the hands of Tenshinhan, and him getting immediately impaled by Gero, combined with how he almost completely fades from relevance after the very first arc, and you have a recipe for a character who would indeed just be stereotyped as an absolute loser.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

And since you enjoy dub / international airings related topics, I can recall two, one I got from a indian channel saying there was supposedly a hijacking on Cartoon Network during a airing of Dragon Ball in 2005 in Europe talking about a murder in Japan. I researched on that and it seems to be just a creepypasta created in 2024. So I'm not sure it's something that many people thought it was true.
Another one I know is that a news report of the 9/11 interrupted the airing of DBZ episode 245 (SSJ3's first appearance) in Brazil. I couldn't track the origin for this one, so it must be really old so I think it's a real case.

Interesting, something similar is said to have happened in New Zealand. I unfortunately can't remember if this was the case on Cartoon Network UK at any time, but probably not since those airings are relatively well documented we probably would have heard from a few fans at least. I can't speak for online discourse of the Brazilian broadcasts though.

[Metalwario64]

I know this is a real "well umm actually Frankenstein was the CREATOR of the monster" kind of answer, but a "Mandela Effect" is when a large population all collectively have the same false memory — one person individually misremembering is just one person individually misremembering.

Some quintessential examples of this are a Shazaam movie starring Sinbad (which doesn't exist), Berenstein Bears instead of Berenstain Bears, and "Luke, I am your father" as a direct spoken line of dialog (it isn't).

One I've been meaning to look into for Dragon Ball is some kind of direct source quotation for "This isn't even my final form!" Obviously there are variations on that quote, but because I don't know the English dub's dialog like the back of my hand, I don't know for sure if Freeza(?) ever actually says that exact sentence word-for-word anywhere (and if so, if perhaps only in a video game).

And the latter two are easily explained because everyone pronounced Berenstain like "berensteen", and every parody and reference added "Luke" to the quote for context, but everyone latched on to that I guess and remembered that over the og.

I think it's insane how many people latched onto a crazy, conspiracy brained phenomenon instead of just going "maybe I misremembered". And 98% of things labeled as Mandela Effects I distinctly recognize as having always been that way so it feels like mass scale gaslighting

[CodeOfMe]

I recently realised that a large amount of fans believe that Gohan punching Cell in the stomach is what made him throw up 18, when it was actually Gohan kicking him in the head that did it. I can kinda understand that because a punch in the stomach making someone throw up just makes sense.

This is one that's actually gotten me. In fact, checking it now, I completely forgot that, in chapter 411, Cell turned into a Grade 3-like form before receiving the kick to the head that makes him throw up 18. Part of it, I assume, is that (in chapter 409) Gohan punches Cell in the stomach and then uppercuts his chin in quick succession, and that uppercut gets mixed up with the kick that happens later, and leads people to assume that Gohan punched Cell's stomach, hit his head, and then Cell threw up 18. So it seems more like the stomach punch was what did it, and the hit to the head was just additional damage, and you forget that there's a whole chapter and a half between those moments. I guess Gohan's transformation and him killing the Cell Juniors, followed shortly by Goku's sacrifice, stand out so much that the details of the rest of the fight can seem a little hazy.

Also, like you said, it makes a lot more sense for a hit to the stomach to be the cause.

[BernardoCairo]

It is a well-known fact that many people in Brazil remember Goku’s transformation into Super Saiyajin 3 against Boo being cut off due to a news report about the events of September 11th. However, that never actually happened. The episode wasn't airing that day, and events didn't unfold at that specific hour. Yet, many people believe it anyway (and I mean many people).
Personally, I think it all started as a rumor someone made up because it sounded interesting, which then turned into a collective false memory.

[Hellspawn28]

I could have sworn that Gohan says "I'm going to destroy you" in the edited dub of the Buu saga, but turns out that wasn't the case.

[Metalwario64]

He does in the Westwood dub. "Fight you? Hah, I'm gonna destroy you!"