Pac-Man World's ending has been noted for containing darker humor compared to the game's otherwise lighthearted tone. The game's antagonist Toc-Man, the robot impostor who kidnapped Pac-Man's family, is revealed to be Orson, a tearful grey ghost who just wanted to be as famous as Pac-Man, who responds to this by pretending to show sympathy before eating him. According to the game's designer, Scott Rogers, his reasoning for this tonal shift was:


Rogers also noted that they wanted to have Pac-Man respond to Orson's cry of "nobody loves a ghost!" with "I do!" (in the sense of loving to eat a ghost), but this was scrapped alongside Pac-Man's voice as a whole.

Pac-Man World: Re-Pac amends this divisive ending by designating it as a bad ending and adding a new good ending. If the player fails to rescue Pac-Man's family, the ending plays out as it did in the original game, with an added scene where Orson's ghost minions choose to rescue Pac-Man's family themselves, but if the player successfully rescues Pac-Man's family, he opts to forgive Orson.

In 2019, AtGames, a company specializing in replica microconsoles containing compilations of retro or retro-styled games, acquired a portion of the rights to Ms. Pac-Man from General Computer Corporation, the company that made the original Ms. Pac-Man game for Midway and Namco - this led to a lawsuit over the IP, with an undisclosed turnout. After this, Ms. Pac-Man would begin to disappear from Pac-Man games, implying that AtGames won the case, with Ms. Pac being replaced by a character named Pac-Mom, who has a visual design resembling Ms. Pac-Man's mother from Pac 'N Roll.

Pac-Mom first appeared in the Arcade Archives release of Pac-Land through graphical modification to the original ROM, and would then be named for the first time in Pac-Man Museum+ alongside modifications to other games that originally featured Ms. Pac-Man such as Pac-in-Time, and would appear again in Pac-Man World: Re-Pac in place of Ms. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man's final appearance in an original title would be on the Pac-Land stage in 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The model for Pac-Man when walking around the Museum Hub contains 8 different face models. Only 3 of these are used in the final game, with another 3 appearing to be placeholders, and the last 2 resembling the hurt and dying animations from Pac-Man World. In addition, an unused idle animation used in Pac-Man World can be found in the game’s files, depicting Pac-Man juggling and then eating pellets. These would later be utilized in the 2022 remake Pac-Man World Re-Pac.

Pac-Man's idle animations when controlling him in the arcade are direct recreations of his idle animations from Pac-Man World. These would later be utilized in the 2022 remake Pac-Man World Re-Pac.