Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatami has regularly told interviewers a recurring story about the inspiration for Pac-Man's character design, claiming he took out a fan-shaped slice from a whole pizza at lunch and saw Pac-Man's mouth in what was left. Over the years, Iwatami has given wildly conflicting versions of the story that put its veracity into question, often switching between it being true and taking place at the chain restaurant Shakey's Pizza, to saying it was "half true" and that it also came from him rounding out the Japanese character for mouth (kuchi, "口") and noticing it looked like a pizza, to saying that he was actually researching "keywords" for eating and found a picture of a pizza with a slice taken out, to saying that he couldn't remember if he even had pizza for lunch on that day.

Xevious and The Tower of Druaga creator Masanobu Endo claimed in a 2017 interview that the design actually came about from technical limitations. He claimed that a yellow circle was the largest and most prescient object that could be put on an arcade cabinet screen at the time, and that the animation of Pac-Man eating looked similar to a pizza with a slice missing. He claimed that this similarity caused it to be inflated into the pizza story and perpetuated by media outlets "in terms of lip service", because it made for an interesting story, despite the story actually first originating from and being spread by Iwatami himself. Iwatami eventually came to accept the story's mythical status in the character's creation without being certain anymore of if it was true, saying in 2000: