r/mildyinteresting • u/Ebonystealth • Mar 24 '26

science savvy 🧬 The left side represents the most common false memories from the Mandela Effect—a psychological phenomenon where large groups of people share the same vivid but incorrect recollection.

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124

u/sixth_acc Mar 24 '26

Who thought Pikachu had a black tipped tail?

126

u/NaiveIllustrator5748 Mar 25 '26

It did but only on some variants https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Cosplay_Pikachu

60

u/Gladys_Ballzitch Mar 25 '26

Thank you for actually showing proof of what you're saying! Lots of other comments claim one thing with no proof.

I always thought there was a black tip, your article proves I actually did see it! Thanks!

20

u/levii-ethan Mar 25 '26

cosplay Pikachu came out with pokemon ORAS in 2014. if you remember the black tip (and cosplay Pikachu specifically has a heart) from before that, it cant be her

12

u/YuukiDR Mar 25 '26

It's probably from bootleg toys, I vividly remember having one as a kid and it had that but it wasn't official merch

21

u/CommercialBiscotti29 Mar 25 '26

This has been a thing way before these pikachus though. I have drawings I made as a kid in the late 90s with pikachu with a black tip tail

3

u/razzemmatazz Mar 25 '26

I think Pikachu had a black-tipped tail in one of the early Pokedex books. 

2

u/Catfist Mar 25 '26

I remember making a Pikachu costume with my mom and mistakenly giving it a black-tipped tail in 2002, well before cosplay Pikachu was a thing, or female pikachus with a heart shaped tail even

65

u/BearyExtraordinary Mar 24 '26

Me!

12

u/AdorableSurround1019 Mar 24 '26

It makes logical sense, why would it be on the ears but not the tail?

10

u/reasonable_magic12 Mar 25 '26

Because it is supposed to be a lightning bolt!

7

u/Senior-Book-6729 Mar 25 '26

...Why would it be? It's not like there is some rule that ears have to match tails

6

u/Gladys_Ballzitch Mar 25 '26

Me definitely

2

u/Short-Being-4109 Mar 25 '26

I distinctly remember Pikachu having one.

1

u/Legal_Sprinkles_4695 Mar 25 '26

Drawing from memory is hard + pattern recognition causing problems.

If you know pikachu has a pattern on its tail but don't remember it exactly, most people are going to default to making the tail match the ears.

1

u/camaheel Mar 25 '26

me, for like all of my life

1

u/DigitalBagel8899 Mar 26 '26

I remember seeing this one about 10 years ago, so I asked around half a dozen people who were all big pokemon fans growing up just to describe to me what Pikachu looks like, and every single one of them mentioned a black tipped tail without me giving any kind of context or clues.

1

u/ConfidentLychee3519 Mar 28 '26

I had a Pikachu plushie as a child that 100% had the tip. Not sure if it was unofficial or if the manufacturer made an oopsie, or if it was just a weird time in the early days of Pokemon and there wasn't as much uniformity among the merch.

1

u/ExcellentBlock7201 Mar 29 '26

I found a childhood picture i doodled in 1999ish of Pikachu with the black tip tail. I'm convinced it was there

1

u/ravenfreak Mar 31 '26

People who either saw a Pichu and mistaken it for Pikachu or people who saw fan art that mistakenly colored in the tip of it's tail. This is the one mandella effect that drives me insane when people are adamant that it had a black tipped tail. It never did, unless you count the costumes Pikachu wears later on in Gen 6 I think? I've been playing these games since 1999.