Out of the various Yesterday movie changes, chief among them is the non-existence of The Beatles - but the Fab Four isn't the only pop culture phenomenon that vanished. In Danny Boyle's romantic comedy/fantasy, a mysterious blackout occurred all over the world that plunged the entire planet into 12 seconds of simultaneous darkness. When the lights came back on, only one person remembers the massive but seemingly random changes the blackout magically brought. That person is Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a struggling UK-based musician and hardcore Beatles fan.
Throughout Yesterday, Jack also gradually learns that the band from Liverpool isn't the only thing that has vanished from the world since the blackout. There are other things he remembers that used to exist which are now inexplicably gone. Because Yesterday is a rom-com, it's focused on Jack's story and his relationship with Ellie, meaning that the cause of the blackout is left unexplained. Still, there are some fascinating other changes to Yesterday's Beatles-less world.
Oasis
After Jack accepted that The Beatles had vanished, he Googled other bands. Jack started with The Rolling Stones, but the Mick Jagger-fronted band were undisturbed. Jack also found out Coldplay still existed because his friends praised their song "Fix You". And, of course, Ed Sheeran remains a huge pop star; he appears as himself in Yesterday and helped launch Jack's global superstardom. However, another group that Jack searched for was Oasis, and all the results he found were about watering holes in the desert. Apart from how the Yesterday movie changes history by cleverly using the universal language of the Google search, this underscores how much Oasis owes to the Fab Four.
Heavily inspired by The Beatles (hence them not existing in this new world), the English rock band fronted by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher was hugely successful in their own right before the feuding siblings disbanded the group in 2009. Oasis' heyday was in the mid-1990s when they released their multi-platinum albums Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, the latter of which was UK's biggest selling album of the 1990s. Jack's ties to Oasis are very personal: in 2004, young Jack performed Oasis' "Wonderwall" at a school talent show, and it was this performance that captured the young Ellie's devotion to him.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola also disappeared from Yesterday's world, which Jack discovered when his mother brought him a Pepsi and had no idea what her son was talking about when he asked for a Coke. Jack's desire for Coca-Cola became a running joke that returned when he and his roadie Rocky (Joel Fry) joined Ed Sheeran on tour. After boarding Ed's private plane, Jack scandalized the flight attendant when he asked for "Coke", which she automatically assumed meant cocaine. Out of all the Yesterday movie changes to the world, this is the most constant reminder that Jack is in some kind of alternate reality.
Indeed, in the real world, Coca-Cola is one of the biggest and most recognizable brand names on Earth, along with Apple and Google. Coca-Cola products are available in over 200 countries and over 1.8 billion Coca-Cola products are consumed each day. Unfortunately, the astonishing ramifications of a brand as huge as Coca-Cola disappearing from history aren't something Yesterday explored beyond the comedy of Jack being unable to enjoy a Coke. At the very least it means that in Yesterday's new reality, Pepsi-Cola automatically won the Cola Wars because Pepsi's dominance in the marketplace was unchallenged.
Cigarettes
In Yesterday, Jack learns that cigarettes don't exist after a particularly stressful moment in Los Angeles, where he asked Rocky for a cigarette and his friend had never heard of such a thing. Yesterday didn't delve any further into cigarettes vanishing from history or its implications, but this must mean that the Big Tobacco industry never rose in this world. Though seemingly mundane when most other Yesterday movie changes are considered, long-time Beatles fans may remember that everyone in the band smoked, and that John Lennon in particular was a heavy smoker throughout his life.
Reportedly, John tried hard to stop smoking in the '70s, but he never truly managed to quit. When John died, he had already switched to Gauloises Bleues, French cigarillos, from the Marlboros that the Beatles smoked. Notably, John Lennon is alive and well at the ending of Yesterday, though he might not have lived that long had cigarettes existed in this alternate timeline.
Harry Potter
Beyond the disappearance of The Beatles, arguably the most shocking of Yesterday movie changes is Harry Potter. Jack discovered that Harry Potter never existed at the end of Yesterday after he spent the night with Ellie. He equated their passion with how Harry must have felt when he beat Lord Voldemort, and Ellie had no idea what Jack was talking about. No Harry Potter in Yesterday's universe must mean J.K. Rowling never wrote the seven Harry Potter novels (and supplemental works) that made her one of the world's wealthiest and most successful authors.
No novels also means no movie franchise, no merchandise, no Fantastic Beasts spinoffs, no Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks, and no passionate fanbase that grew up with the boy wizard's adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's certainly curious that Yesterday's world lacks major British contributions to pop culture like The Beatles and Harry Potter, and it's a shame the film doesn't delve deeper into the how's and why's. Eerily, however, Yesterday's Potter-less world hit theaters almost exactly a year before J.K. Rowling's controversial Tweets. It's a strange coincidence, but the Yesterday movie changes did cast a wide net with its choice of cultural phenomena to erase from the world.
