Chuck E Cheese’s denies viral YouTuber rumour that it reuses leftover pizza and flogs it back to customers

World famous rat-themed food emporium Chuck E. Cheese’s have this week been forced to deny an elaborate internet conspiracy concerning the origin of their pizza. Accusations from well known YouTuber and occasional sceptic Shane Dawson went viral, sparking a debate that has rocked fast food fans everywhere and called into question everything that we thought we knew about the industry.

In a video uploaded on Monday, Dawson alleged that Chuck E. Cheese’s, famous for providing an unparalleled assortment of metaphorically and literally cheesy foodstuffs, have an underhand technique to guarantee that nothing goes to waste. According to Dawson, “there is a theory that if someone at Chuck E. Cheese’s doesn’t finish their pizza, (the staff) literally take it to the back and form a new pizza, reheat it, and send it back out to customers.”

After outlining his idea, Dawson does a little more digging. A few hours on the internet and what feels like hundreds of lopsided, mismatched pizza slices later, Dawson finally declares, “Oh my god, it’s real! I think it’s a bunch of pieces of pizza put together.” Describing a Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza in his kitchen, he went on to add that, “I think we’ve proven that these two halves were never together,” before teasing, “There is a reason and legally I’m not gonna say what I think that reason is.” Predictably, the internet were quick to get on board.

Dawson’s video, which has over 17 million views at the time of writing, has been the catalyst for a flood of amazed and outraged responses from across America. Several Chuck E. Cheese’s customers seem to have wholeheartedly signed up to the theory, taking to Twitter to voice their support for the idea and providing photographic evidence of their own experience. As a neutral, it’s hard to argue that they don’t have a point.

After being taken aback by the wave of criticism, Chuck E. Cheese’s have finally decided to act. In a statement provided to Buzzfeed News, the company said that, “The claims made in this video about Chuck E. Cheese’s and our pizza are unequivocally false,” before adding, “No conspiracies here – 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.”

To confuse the issue further, INSIDER spoke to a former Chuck E. Cheese’s employee, who revealed that she had never seen anyone reusing pizza slices in all her time with the company. The woman, who identified herself as “Samantha”, claimed that, “It gets so cold and gross so fast, that I feel like people would notice if they were recycled.” She went on to add, “I’ve seen employees eat the leftover pizza, but I haven’t seen them box it up for people.”

Despite the protestations of the company and its workforce, most of the internet still seems to have big questions for Chuck E. Cheese’s. Although there may well be an innocent explanation for everything that’s going on, there’s no denying that the optics look bad. Let’s hope we haven’t all been sold a reconstituted lie.