There are a ton of episodes ofOne Pieceand even more chapters of the manga, making it a massive undertaking for anyone to want to dive into. It should come as no surprise that there are bound to be tons of little details that fans will have missed over the years.
Some of these tidbits of trivia come from official books or other media, while others come from the SBS, a special question-and-answer column where series creator Eiichiro Oda replies to fan letters that anime-only fans might never see. Let’s take a dive into some unique bits of trivia to impress your friends with.
10Only A Few Months Pass Before The Timeskip
A Lot Happens VERY Quickly
At the start of the series, Luffy is only 17 years old when he embarks on a lifetime of adventures on the sea, but between the start of the anime and the two-year time skip, only a few months pass in-universe.
Firm time frames are almost impossible to nail down, but when Luffy and the crew return from the time skip, only two years have passed, and Luffy is 19. Enterprising fans have kept track of the phases of the moon shown in the manga during the Sea of Survival: Super Rookies Saga, which takes viewers right up to the time skip. While likely not the most accurate, it seems to show somewhere between 3-5 months passing.
9Pandaman Could Be Hiding Anywhere
Pops Up In Hundreds Of Chapters
If you’re not looking at the background of every episode and manga chapter, you likely would never have seen the infamous Pandaman in One Piece. A joke character created by Eiichiro Oda for another series called Kinnikuman, also known as Ultimate Muscle.
Pandaman has gone on to find their way into dozens of episodes and manga chapters, often as a bystander in a crowd watching the events of the plot unfold. At times, Pandaman is referenced in other ways, like when he popped up on a wanted poster and another time where his name appeared on the Poneglyph in Alabasta.
8Blackbeard Blew Up Chopper’s Home
A Good Ol’ Revolution
It has been 25 years since fans were introduced to the Drum Island, which helps keep this little tidbit of trivia obscure even for dedicated fans. Before Luffy and the gang make it to the island, the king of Drum Island, Walpol, was disposed by a pirate of overwhelming strength and cruelty.
It turns out that the vile pirate was none other than Blackbeard, hinted at a full year before he would make an appearance in the Jaya Arc on Mock Island. This attack would drive Wapol and his royal court from the island, leaving a vacuum of power in the land and a lack of doctors since Walpol also kidnapped the Isshi-20, a group of twenty doctors who were forced to work for him.
7Speculative Art About The Straw Hat’s Future
Could Be Good, Could Be Bad
In a special entry to the SBS, Eiichiro Oda took a dive into what the future of the Straw Hat Pirates could hold. These entries showed the characters at 40 years old, and again at 60, though across two diverging timelines. One where the characters achieved their dreams, and one where they gave up on them.
Notably, Luffy calls being the Pirate King a dream in the dark timeline, Sanji follows his father’s footsteps and becomes a cruel king, and Chopper becomes some kind of cult mob boss demanding sacrifices. For some reason, Franky and Brook were left out, but it still is a heartbreaking look at what could go wrong.
6There May Be Many Moons
Or Just One
In a blink-and-you-miss-it scene, a scene from Chapter 392 of the manga shows a flashback of Nico Robin in Oharabefore it was destroyed by the Marines. In this flashback, we see Clou D. Clover standing before an orrery, with what looks like the Blue Planet (the otherwise unnamed planet that One Piece takes place on) at the center of what looks like six other celestial bodies.
This could mean that there are many moons, or it could be a geocentric model of the solar system, with the other bodies being planets in the solar system instead of moons. Since Ohara was blown up in a Buster Call along with almost the entire population of the island, it is a mystery that might never be solved. That said, there have been several times where the moon is shown in the night sky, but there is only one moon so who knows.
5Blackbeard Referred To As ‘They’
A Mystery 24 Years Unsolved
Shortly after meeting Blackbeard at Mock Town during the early chapters of the Jaya Arc, Luffy and Zoro make a strange reference to Blackbeard that has gone through a few different iterations across translations but remains a mystery that many may have missed. After meeting the jolly Blackbeard, he claims that ‘people’s dreams don’t ever end’, a seemingly inspirational message from someone who would become the primary antagonist towards the end of the series.
While leaving, Nami asks who he is, and Luffy and Zoro clarify that Blackbeard isn’t ‘he’ but instead ‘they’. This was changed from the original translation to Luffy saying ‘it’s not just one guy’ but remains pretty ambiguous still. Plenty of speculation has popped up around this vague statement, from Blackbeard having multiple personalities to three people using the name Blackbeard, or that Luffy and Zoro are referring to Blackbeard’s crew.
4Enel’s Great Space Operations
The Pirate Space Race
If you’ve only watched the One Piece anime, you likely missed a mini cover story from the One Piece manga focused on the villain of the Jaya arc, Enel. Cover stories are canon arcs that are typically told one page at a time at the start of many One Piece chapters.
The cover story of Enel’s Great Space Operations follows him after his defeat and subsequent launch to the moon. There, Enel encounters a civilization of tiny robots known as automata and a group of Space Pirates. Over a series of almost unbelievable events, Enel saves the automata, drives off the Space Pirates, and uses his god-like electric Goro Goro no Mi powers to revitalize and power up the entire automata civilization.
3Kuro Is Vital To The Plot
Not Just A Throw-Away Villain
If it’s been a minute since you’ve gone back to watch the Syrup Village Arc, it can be easy to forget how pivotal Kuro of a Hundred Plans was to the overall plot of the series. The former captain of the Black Cat Pirates used a fall guy to fake his capture and execution by Axe-Hand Morgan.
But all this sets the stage for theinitial members of the Straw Hat Crew. If Kuro didn’t fake his capture, Morgan wouldn’t have been promoted to Captain in the Marines, which means Zoro would never have been captured, and Luffy would never have met him. That also means that Kuro unwittingly set up his fall by creating a series of events that would lead to Luffy and the gang taking him down.
2Magic Seems To Exist, But No One Talks About It
Not Just Devil Fruits
Characters in One Piece are incredibly strong and have fantastical abilities, but they’re almost always definedas being granted by Devil Fruits. Except for when they’re not. Characters like Marianne, who is part of Baroque Works and is also known as Miss Goldenweek, can use her Colors Trap ability to hypnotize people into moving against their will.
This power doesn’t come from a Devil Fruit and is only described as coming from her skills as a realist painter, which seems absurd, even for One Piece. There are plenty of other non-Devil Fruit powers, of course, with Haki, Rokushiki, and Minks can utilize electricity in their attacks being a few examples, but some powers just don’t make sense outside of this context.
1No Devil Fruit User Has Drowned, Yet
It’s Only A Matter Of Time
One of the only shared features across all Devil Fruit users is that by eating one of the Fruits, the user loses their ability to swim. It is a significant weakness that can spell death even for the strongest fighter, as even getting splashed with seawater can render the user helpless. The strange thing is that not a single user has died this way so far.
At most, a character from the non-canonical Warship Island Arc, Eric the Whirlwind, was kicked into a whirlpool, but is never shown to actually die and even shows up in a Game Boy Advance game, One Piece: Great Hidden Treasure of the Nanatsu Islands, a year later. The may be a hint to a possible death or deaths in the future of the series; however, as the Blackbeard Pirates have a rather unfortunate moniker of the Titanic Captains, and they have alotof Devil Fruit users on the crew.
