Pasta! Most of the foods I really like are pasta dishes. Although spaghetti and meatballs is apparently an "americanized" version because when my parents went to Venice a few years ago my mom said they just laugh at you if you ask for meatballs.
Garfield the cat, because he was born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant one night, and loved lasagna and most other Italian food right from the start. The owner had to sell Garfield to a pet store because he was eating him out of business. Then Jon happened to go to the pet store, and the rest is history. I was actually thinking about the backstory this morning before I read this.
The fact that it's shaped like a boot.
Super Mario Bros.
In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, if the country that Gulliver was planning to visit is Italy and you guess correctly, he'll be all stoked about how he'll get to eat lots of pasta "just like that plumber guy".
Expensive designer clothing.
The Mafia.
The Roman gods and goddesses, and the planets they're named after.
Pinocchio, whose name means "pine" or "pine nut".
Not to mention the original story written by Carlo Collodi, which was quite a bit darker than the Disney version. Apparently it was because Collodi hated kids, especially boys, even though this was supposed to be a children's story, so he has Pinocchio basically acting like a lazy, irresponsible brat for most of the story, and whenever Pinocchio suffered for his actions it was told in a lot of detail. I read the story, so I know. It was even originally going to end with Pinocchio's death. ![Shocked 8O](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
The paparazzi, which I'm sorry to say is maybe even worse than it is in the US or the UK. That's where the name came from in the first place.
The word influenza, which was once commonly referred to as "la grippe" from the French, but was later renamed influenza because people, who were probably Italian, believed health was influenced by the stars.
Distinguished wine. But I wouldn't know which kinds of wine are distinguished or not since I don't drink... wine.
*tucks in vampire fangs*
The Italian-style bread I usually get at the store is soft and delicious like French bread, but my mom told me that in Venice they leave just their bread out until it gets all hard and stale. That doesn't sound good at all. Maybe they dip it in soup or stew or something but it still sounds bad.
She also told me on their cruise around Venice and Greece the pizza they served on the ship was really good, but had so much cheese on it she couldn't eat more than one slice.