We Tested Shane Dawson’s Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Conspiracy Theory, This Is What We Found

For a while now, celebrity YouTuber Shane Dawson has been blowing folks’ minds with deep dives into some absolutely wild conspiracy theories. The latest one he explored, which surrounds Chuck E. Cheese, has some folks concerned that employees at the chain might be recycling pizza slices.

A recent video from Dawson explores the theory, examining evidence of Chuck E. Cheese pizza pictures from the internet that seem to prove that that might be the case. Crusts that don’t join together, cut lines covered with cheese (or missing altogether), oddly sized pizza slices… something definitely wasn’t adding up.

Dawson and his crew did go to an actual Chuck E. Cheese to investigate further, and found the exact same results on the pizzas they ordered, suggesting that their “whole pizza” could actually be an amalgamation of several leftover ones.

The theory has since spread like wildfire over social media, leading to Chuck E. Cheese themselves to eventually step in. They dismissed Dawson’s video to The Verge, calling his claims “unequivocally false.”

“No conspiracies here,” a spokesperson added, “our pizzas are made to order and we prepare our dough fresh in restaurant, which means that they’re not always perfectly uniform in shape, but always delicious.”

Seems legit, but something with that response didn’t feel right to me, especially given that some of the crusts shown just could not have been from slices naturally next to each other on a pizza. As a result, I did some further investigating of my own.

A couple of years back, Foodbeasts Elie Ayrouth and Evan Lancaster went to a local Chuck E. Cheese, high on THC toffee, to review the entire pizza buffet. I went back and took a look at some of the pizzas on the buffet line, and they definitely matched the ones in Dawson’s video.

Here’s a look at one of those pies:

This close-up shot shows that there’s at least one piece at the top left where the crust sticks out at an odd length, almost as if it’s come from a different pizza.

This shot is kinda blurry, but it captures the same issue with that piece of pizza crust on the left. The crust also looks flatter on the closer half of the pie than the other half.

You can argue that most of the pie was likely from a single one, but that slice in the upper left? No way that crust is from the same pie as the two slices next to it.

So, could Chuck E. Cheese employees actually be reusing slices off of old pizzas? Based on what we saw in our own video and Shane’s, it’s definitely possible. Granted, this is a small sample to draw from, and Chuck E. Cheese has already come out and denied such claims. The evidence suggests otherwise, though, and while it’s not concrete enough to hand the verdict to one side or the other, a further investigation definitely has some merit.