I wonder if it's not so much a pattern thing, as a comfort thing? At around four or five months, kids start to really notice the world around them, and become aware when things change. I wonder if he wasn't always sort of waking around the same time, and just falling back to sleep. (We all get close to waking several times a night. It's a sleep cycle thing.) Now that he's started to become aware that things are different, well, he fell asleep with the pacifier the first time, so when he woke in the night and didn't have his paci, he needed it again. He fell asleep eating (or, at least, the last thing he remembered before falling alseep was eating), so when he woke up, he wanted to be eating. It's sort of like waking up and finding your pillow has fallen off the bed. It's disorienting, and you want things to go back to how they were when you fell asleep. Could that be it?
Is skipping the paci to go to sleep, so you won't have to replace it in the night an option? Or try an activity between nursing and sleep, so that it's not the last thing he's thinking about when he falls to sleep. Sing to him or read a story or something, and let him go down drowsy but awake. If the last thing he's thinking of is being gently put in bed with his blankie, maybe just being in bed with his blankie (or whatever his lovey is) will be enough to soothe him back to sleep if he wakes again.