I've come across another Mandela effect online, this one involving the classic Western, Shane. Some people - and I'm one of them - are convinced that after calling out "Come back, Shane!" several times, little Joey Starrett's final words in the film are "Bye, Shane."
This changes the meaning of the film's ending by turning it into something about growing up and the death of the old West. Yet any time you find this final scene online it seems to be missing those two words. Have we misremembered the film?
No, because here is the full version and you can clearly hear Joey call out "Bye, Shane".
Do people posting clips online end the scene early because they've become convinced that the famous "Come back, Shane!" ends the film? Or has television's cavalier attitude to cutting films short to trail the next programme infected them?
I don't know, but I did once work out that Joey Starrett would have been 73 when Shane was released. And I have also written about the career of the boy who played him, Brandon deWilde.
And now we have the correct ending, another question arises. The last we see of Shane, he is slumped in the saddle and riding through a graveyard. Is he already dead?
You may say this is reading too much into the closing shot. But as someone pointed out, George Stevens spent 18 months editing the film, so nothing you see on the screen is there by accident.
I also remembered that the final quieter words are Bye Shane. I thought of that as being positive - that the boy is metaphorically letting Shane go, and therefore also leaving it open that he may come back ...
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