Presume he had just ate a power pellet, of course.
Followup matchups for your consideration:
- Slimer, from “Ghostbusters”
- Sadako, from “The Ring”
- Freddy Krueger, from “Nightmare on Elm Street”
- The clown from “It”
- A ring wraith from “Lord of the Rings”
But, this establishes that the pellets have to be acted upon by an outside force to affect the ghosts. It might also be reasonable to assume that this action may be exclusive to the Pac family.
It makes sense if the usage of the power pellet allows Pac-Man to affect the ghosts material form temporarily.
I like to imagine a situation where Pac-Man set off a paint bomb in a room covering everyones clothes with blue paint that makes those clothes edible. He eats a dudes now blue shirt, dude freaks out, goes home, changes his shirt and comes back. Everyone else still has edible shirts but not dude. Maybe someone else goes to the bathroom and washes off the paint on their shirt after a bit under the faucet. Their shirt is also no longer edible.
Good thing you’re not submitting this to a journal for peer review then. ;)
I love this conversation so much.