History Characters / OnePieceTheFourEmperors

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!All spoilers regarding the Super Rookies era are unmarked. Examples relating to the New World era can be spoiler-tagged if deemed necessary.

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[[center: [- [[Characters/OnePiece Main Character Index]] | [[Characters/OnePieceStrawHatPirates Straw Hat Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceStrawHatMonkeyDLuffy "Straw Hat" Monkey D. Luffy]] | [[Characters/OnePiecePirateHunterRoronoaZoro "Pirate Hunter" Roronoa Zoro]] | [[Characters/OnePieceCatBurglarNami "Cat Burglar" Nami]] | [[Characters/OnePieceStrawHatPiratesEastBlue Straw Hats That Joined in East Blue]] | [[Characters/OnePieceStrawHatPiratesAfterEastBlue Straw Hats That Joined After East Blue]] | [[Characters/OnePieceStrawHatGrandFleet Straw Hat Grand Fleet]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMajorAllies Major Allies]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMajorAlliesPartTwo Major Allies (Part 2)]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMajorVillainsEastBlue Major Villains in East Blue]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMajorVillainsParadise Major Villains in Paradise]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMajorVillainsNewWorld Major Villains in the New World]] | [[Characters/OnePieceTheWorldGovernment The World Government]] | [[Characters/OnePieceTheMarines The Marines]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMarineAdmirals Marine Admirals]] | [[Characters/OnePieceCipherPol Cipher Pol]] | [[Characters/OnePieceTheSevenWarlordsOfTheSea The Seven Warlords of the Sea]] | [[Characters/OnePieceTheSevenWarlordsOfTheSeaCrews Warlord Crews]] | [[Characters/OnePieceBaroqueWorks Baroque Works]] | [[Characters/OnePieceThrillerBarkPirates Thriller Bark Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceKuja Kuja]] | [[Characters/OnePieceDonquixotePirates Donquixote Pirates]] | '''The Four Emperors''' | [[Characters/OnePieceRedHairPirates Red Hair Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceWhitebeardPirates Whitebeard Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceBeastPirates Beast Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceBigMomPirates Big Mom Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceThreeSweetCommanders Big Mom Pirates: Three Sweet Commanders]] | [[Characters/OnePieceBlackbeardPirates Blackbeard Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceTheElevenSupernovas The Eleven Supernovas]] | [[Characters/OnePieceSupernovasCrews Supernovas Crews]] | [[Characters/OnePieceRevolutionaryArmy Revolutionary Army]] | [[Characters/OnePieceGerma66 Germa 66]] | [[Characters/OnePieceSkyPeople Sky People]] | [[Characters/OnePieceMink Mink Tribe]] | [[Characters/OnePieceWano Wano Country]] | [[Characters/OnePieceHistoricalFiguresAndFlashbackCharacters Historical Figures and Flashback Characters]] | [[Characters/OnePieceCiviliansAndNonPirates Civilians and Non-Pirates]] | [[Characters/OnePieceOrganizationsAndCrews Miscellaneous Crews and Organizations]] | [[Characters/OnePieceOthers Others]] | [[Characters/OnePieceAnimeOnly Anime-Only Characters]]]]-]
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!The Four Emperors
[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yonko_shonen_jump.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:The Four Emperors[[labelnote:Characters]]'''Left, top to bottom:''' Marshall D. Teach, Shanks, Kaido, Charlotte Linlin; '''Right:''' Monkey D. Luffy.[[/labelnote]]]]

->''"A threat...a demand...when issued by one with absolute, overwhelming power becomes simply inevitable fate...after all, who could possibly oppose it? That is the existence known as the Yonko! And this is what it means to be driven to your very wit's end...!"''
-->--'''Pekoms'''

The Four Emperors (四皇, ''Yonkou'') are the most notorious and feared pirate leaders in the ''{{One Piece}}'' world, who, alongside their powerful crews and numerous allies, each rule over large territories of the New World like overlords. They are widely considered to be the strongest pirates in the world as well as the candidates closest to becoming the Pirate King, and a single Emperor's crew and alliance is strong enough to challenge the World Government's forces. Thankfully for the world at large, the Four Emperors function independently from each other, sometimes fighting each other in power struggles mainly contained within the New World part of Grand Line.

Amongst the original four, only Shanks and Whitebeard were seen to be benevolent, while Big Mom and Kaido were far more immoral and nefarious. While only Blackbeard's (absolutely massive) bounty has been revealed thus far, they are all undoubtedly among those whose bounties go up to at least ten figures — a level of bounty reserved for people whom the government and onlookers consider to be near-unstoppable monsters.

The once-dreaded power of the Emperors has since been challenged by newer, bolder generations of pirates: Whitebeard lost his life in a WarArc with the Marines, and his killer, Blackbeard, officially replaced him over the course of the following year after he took over the former's territories and defeated the remnants of his crew; Linlin lost two of her ally ships to Kid (another Supernova), who formed an alliance with Hawkins and Apoo (two more Supernovas) to bring down Red-Haired Shanks (only for their alliance to be attacked by Kaido, who inducted Apoo and Hawkins as allies and captured and brutalized Kid); Monkey D. Luffy (one more Supernova) publicly challenged Big Mom for authority over Fishman Island; and Trafalgar Law (both a Supernova ''and'' a former Warlord of the Sea), is actively working with Luffy to take down Kaido.
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[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:In General]]
* TheAce: All the Emperors are rulers of their own section of the New World and are pretty much immune from the law since it takes the entire military and the Seven Warlords to match just one Emperor's crew. The Emperors alone are among the strongest people in the ''One Piece'' world, and their crews number in the thousands, and that's not counting their ally members like [[spoiler:Doflamingo, one of the Warlords, who worked under Kaido before his downfall]].
* ArtifactTitle: [[spoiler: With Luffy now being counted among their ranks for his actions in Whole Cake Island, there is now actually ''five'' Emperors and the title "Yonko" (literally meaning "four emperors" in Japanese) is no longer applicable. It's unclear how much the other four actually ''agree'' with Luffy's status, but Big Mom at the very least is furious]].
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: All Emperors have the strength to compete with [[WorldsStrongestMan Whitebeard]]. Although most of their abilities have only been hinted at, it's safe to assume all of them possess island-shattering amounts of badassery. [[spoiler:Luffy is declared the 'Fifth Emperor' simply because the act of 'raiding' Big Mom's turf, doing significant damage to her operation, achieving his goal, and ''surviving'' is considered such a massive feat of badassery only an Emperor is capable of achieving it, even if he wasn't nearly strong enough to actually beat her yet.]]
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant:
** Although the Four Emperors are just one of the three military superpowers of the world, the other two exist solely to oppose them. To put that another way, the [[CarnivalofKillers Warlords]] and the Marines ''together'' balance the power of the Emperors who are all independent of one another. This is why when an Emperor declares that a country is their territory, the World Government ''and even other pirates keep out'', hence their titles.
** When the Marines declared that they were going to execute the 2nd Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, they unleashed 5 Warlords, 3 Admirals, dozens of Vice Admirals, [[OldMaster the man who once cornered the Pirate King]], a platoon of Giants, the Fleet Admiral himself, at least a dozen Pacifistas, and all available rank and file Marines. This was considered just enough to ''possibly survive'' against Whitebeard. Odds are they never would've even attempted it without [[MechaMooks a trump card]]. [[spoiler:On top of that, at the climax of the war, when [[KnightTemplar Akainu]] wanted the Marines to continue to kill the pirates at all costs, all it took was Shanks to show up and ''threaten to get involved'' for everyone, including [[BigBad Blackbeard]], to walk away.]]
* BigBadEnsemble: Blackbeard, Kaido and Big Mom compete with Sakazuki for the series overall spot.
* BrokenAce: For all their power and influence, the Emperors are also some of the most screwed up individuals in the series. Big Mom is a psychotically insane glutton with a BigScrewedUpFamily, Kaido is an alcoholic nihilist who wants to destroy the world in a massive war, and Blackbeard is a conniving, backstabbing DirtyCoward. Even Shanks has his flaws (like Kaido, he's alcoholic, and also a massive party animal). The only one that seems to actual subvert this is Whitebeard; despite his tendency to disregard medical advice and his unshakable pride, he's one of the most well-adjusted individuals in all of ''One Piece''.
* CurbStompBattle: The ability to give these is very much a requirement to become an Emperor. All of them has been giving these out wily nily every since chapter 1 with Shank's first appearance.
* TheDreaded:
** They're the four most powerful pirates of the world, each of them ''alone'' capable of challenging the might of the World Government. It's kind of a given. And as Pekoms illustrates, their demands become "inevitable fate" because of their sheer power, whether in person or in influence.
** [[spoiler:This trope directly plays into Luffy's own ascension to Emperor status. The Emperors are so feared that the mere ''idea'' of defying any one of them is unthinkable; all those who've tried have been brutally swatted down, with few lucky to escape with their lives. The Straw Hats getting away with as much they did during the Whole Cake Island arc is ''so'' unprecedented and outrageous that it only takes some extra information and a bit of twisting the truth for the media to declare Luffy the fifth member of their number]].
* EliteFour: They're the top four pirates of the One Piece world.
* EnemyCivilWar: The natural state of their relationships, which is required to maintain the balance of power in the world. The Marines start ''freaking out'' at the news that two Emperors were going to have a face-to-face talk.
** [[spoiler: In the Reverie arc, it's hinted that Big Mom and Kaido once had their own form of pirate alliance in their younger days, and the mere fact that they're even talking about relaxing hostilities on an ''unsecured'' line terrifies the Marine HQ and Five Elder Stars.]]
* KlingonPromotion: The obvious way to become an Emperor is to challenge and kill one. This is the route Blackbeard took, although he still wasn't thought of as an Emperor until he definitively crushed the remainder of Whitebeard's crew who came looking for revenge. [[spoiler:Turns out, causing big enough ruckus in their territory and escaping (relatively) unscathed does the trick as well - and having numerous affiliated pirate crews and several thousand subordinates doesn't hurt your chances.]]
* LargeAndInCharge: With the exception of Shanks, they're ''titanic''. Even the shortest after Shanks, Blackbeard, is over 11 feet tall, and Shanks himself would be hardly considered short either at 6'6.5" feet tall. [[spoiler: Also averted with Luffy's possible inclusion into the ranks of the Emperors]].
* NGOSuperpower: Each of the Four Emperors ''alone'' could challenge the entire military might of the World Government -- in fact, it wouldn't be wrong to say they could probably rule the world if they hadn't isolated themselves to just the New World. It even applies to their interactions; as the Whole Cake Island arc shows, the games the Emperors play (both with each other and with the Marines) are about politics as much as they are about power. They rely on both reputation (see SlaveToPR below) and money, and essentially act just like the World Government by taking countries under their banner for protection. The only difference is that the World Government is concerned with maintaining order (and catering to the World Nobles), while the Emperors are solely concerned with their own personal desires.
* TheNotableNumeral: They are collectively called "Four Emperors", or "Yonkou" in Japanese. In Japanese, the term "Yonkou" puts an emphasis that the emperor isn't the only one to be called like that and that they are three other people who share the same title.
* NotHyperbole: Whitebeard, Blackbeard and Red Hair all have the corresponding appearance. Big Mom has 85 children and Kaido “of the hundred beast” has an army of 500+ beast men (alternatively, Kaido “the king of beasts” is a [[spoiler: dragon.]]
* OneManArmy: The response of the Marines to ''any'' of the four making a move is to ''rally everyone'' to the area they're expected to show up. Each of them is capable of razing an entire kingdom to the ground single-handedly.
* OnlySaneMan: Red-Haired Shanks, a.k.a Luffy's idol, became this after the death of Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate. Not only is he the only Pirate Emperor that isn't crazy, ruthless, power-hungry, nor bloodthirsty, but he has proven to be quite the diplomat when he last talked to Whitebeard about Ace going after Blackbeard, as well as at The Battle of Marineford when he single-handedly stopped the war.
* PersonOfMassDestruction: Whitebeard [[spoiler:and then Blackbeard]] had the power to destroy the world if he wanted to, Kaido has been known to sink entire prison ships ''specifically'' meant to hold him, and Big Mom goes on {{Kaiju}}-like rampages when in one of her 'urges' and has the power to ''rip out people's souls''. Shanks hasn't shown much, but a clash between him and Whitebeard ''split the sky''. It's safe to say being this is a ''requirement'' to be an Emperor.
* SlaveToPR: During the Whole Cake Island arc, it turns out that the Emperors play a political game as much as they do a power one. Part of being one of the Four Emperors is maintaining an air of invincibility and a degree of unreasonableness, enhancing their status as TheDreaded. Much like the World Government, who tend to cover-up their failures and corruption to present themselves to the world at large as competent and just, the Emperors are dependent on never showing any sign of weakness, and do so by either killing or (usually forcibly) recruiting any who challenge them. [[spoiler:This is the main reason why the Big Mom Pirates are so desperate to capture and kill the Straw Hats and the Firetanks during the latter half of the Whole Cake Island arc. Their name was already damaged enough when the two groups screwed up their plan to murder the Vinsmokes. If they were to ''escape'', it would be an irreversible and unmistakable sign of weakness that would open them up to possible attacks from the other Emperors or even the Marines. When the Straw Hats and Firetank pirates ''do'' escape, the only reason the Big Mom Pirates don't take a massive hit to their reputation is because the incident was so outrageous that the media thought only another Emperor-level crew could have pulled it off, massively ''boosting'' the Straw Hat Pirates' own reputation and declaring Luffy the ''Fifth Emperor'' in the process]].
* SuperPowerLottery: All of them are big time winners, besides Shanks. Whitebeard can create earthquakes and tsunamis, Big Mom rips people’s souls and Kaido’s [[spoiler:a freaking giant dragon]]. Blackbeard specifically gunned for one of these in his search for devil fruit power and only after acquiring the power of Darkness that he made his move.
* SuperToughness: They're this by ''[[UpToEleven One Piece standards]]''. Things like impalement or losing an arm are minor inconveniences to them. And that's if you actually ''hurt'' them, which is in and of itself a huge task. The exception is Blackbeard, who actually takes more damage than a Logia would be expected to take, but he's still MadeOfIron regardless and might have even grown tougher to compensate.
* WithUsOrAgainstUs:
** Essentially how the New World works. As it is demonstrated with the Worst Generation post-timeskip, the only way to survive is to overthrow them (ie. Law, Kid, and [[spoiler:Bege]]'s alliances, who are planning to topple Kaido, Shanks, and Big Mom respectively) or swallow your pride and serve under them (ie. Bege, Apoo).
** [[TakeAThirdOption Teach on the other hand stays defied both and followed his plan, using his knowledge of Whitebeard's territory from his time at the crew and winning the Payback War to become an Emperor himself.]]
** [[spoiler:Luffy ends up achieving similar status by screwing around with Big Mom's plans.]]
* WorldsStrongestMan: Being an Emperor is essentially saying you're one of these. The novels discuss this, noting that it means something different depending on person. Whitebeard is the "Strongest Pirate", Big Mom has the "Strongest Family" and Kaido is the "Strongest Creature".
[[/folder]]

!!Four Emperors at the Start of the Story

[[folder:"Red-Haired" Shanks]]
!!"Red-Haired" Shanks
!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/ShuichiIkeda (JP), Tom Souhrada (EN, 4Kids), Brandon Potter (EN, Funi), Raúl Anaya (Latin American Spanish)
!!!'''Age:''' 37 (Pre-Timeskip), 39 (Post-Timeskip)
!!!'''Birthday:''' March 9th
!!!'''Debut:''' Chapter 1 (Manga), Episode 4 (Anime)

[[quoteright:325:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shanks_anime.png]]

->''"Listen up... you can pour drinks on me, you can throw food at me... you can even spit on me; I'll just laugh that stuff off. But... good reason or not, '''nobody hurts a friend of mine!'''"''

Shanks is Luffy's idol, has inspired him to partake in a life of piracy, captain of the [[Characters/OnePieceRedHairPirates Red Hair Pirates]] and one of the Four Emperors that rule over the New World. Unlike Whitebeard (or presumably Kaido) he doesn't lord this status over everyone else, preferring to travel to different stops and party, with a special fondness for drinking. When Shanks was younger, he and Buggy were both apprentices in the Roger Pirates, the crew of the late Pirate King, "Gold" Roger, and clashed with Whitebeard's crew several times. They were subordinate to Silvers Rayleigh, the first-mate of the crew, and spent their time fighting each other. Both of them attended their captain's public execution, where they parted ways to form their own crews. Sometime afterward he became the rival of Dracule Mihawk, and their duels are now legend throughout the Grand Line, remembered even by Whitebeard.\\\

During Luffy's youth, The Red Hair Pirates stopped at his town and usually went to the town bar. Luffy always used to plead with him to join the crew. Shanks not only refused, but teased Luffy about not being able to swim, and that he's just a kid. Shanks saved his life when a bandit tried to drown him, which cost him his dominant arm, but Shanks said that it didn't matter as long as Luffy was safe. Shanks then gave Luffy his favorite hat, telling him to return it once he surpasses him, and set sail.
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* AcheyScars: Shanks says that the three scars on his left eye, made years ago by Blackbeard, have started to ache at the same time that Ace is dueling with Blackbeard on Banaro Island.
* AllLovingHero: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Shanks is well aware of how killing and death are a part of a pirate's life and is not afraid of committing said action in defense of his friends, but he is a major NiceGuy who is also against needless bloodshed.
* ArtEvolution: Very drastically. The Straw Hats' changing designs can be chalked up to the fact they're still at a young enough age to physically grow, but it's bizarre to see Shanks become so hunky if you're more familiar with his earlier look.
* AuthorAvatar: In one of the SBS questions, Oda answered that Shanks is the character who resembles him the most.
-->''"Shanks is the one character that resembles himself the most out of all the One Piece characters, because of his fun-loving partying nature and cheerful personality".''
* AwesomeMcCoolName: You DO know what it means to ''shank'' someone, right? Also see NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast.
* AwesomenessIsAForce:
** People faint and ships literally start to crumble in his presence.
** Shanks' Conqueror's Haki is easily the strongest known in the series. When Luffy knocked out 50,000 fishmen in one burst, [[http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/SBS_Volume_65 Oda said]] that Shanks could do ''twice'' that.
* BadassCape: Wears one, as does the rest of his crew.
* BadassInCharge: Leader of the Red Hair Pirates, with accomplishments that include [[StaringDownCthulhu scaring a Sea King by staring at it]], crossing blades with [[WorldsStrongestMan Whitebeard]] and walking away from it, forcing [[BeastMan Kaido]] to back off when he wanted to catch Whitebeard by surprise, [[ThreateningMediator and stopping a war just by threatening to take down anyone on either side who wants to continue]].
* BadassNormal: The fact that he can swim automatically excludes him from being a Devil Fruit user, meaning his badassery is nothing more than a combination of CharlesAtlasSuperpower and [[KiAttacks Haki]]. He's also the only one of the four emperors (past and present) to be a normal sized human, yet his strength is just as renowned as any of theirs. In fact, he could even match Whitebeard's power in a clash with just his one arm!
* BadassPacifist: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. He managed to end the Marineford War with only a few words, and while he ''did'' threaten to use violence (see the ThreateningMediator below for more details), ''everyone'' decided to not fight Shanks and his crew.
* BashBrothers: He wanted to be this with Buggy. Buggy refused.
* BenevolentBoss: He seems to generally get along with his crew, and they look up to him with respect as their captain. Shanks looks out for the well-being of the entire crew, from refusing to take a child (Luffy) on board his ship to denying permission to take on Whitebeard's men who had insulted Rockstar's honor.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Higuma learned this the hard way, as he pissed Shanks off by threatening Luffy. He's normally one of the most carefree and kind characters in the series, but he's an Emperor and ''stopped an entire war by just showing up'' for a reason.
* BigDamnHeroes: When he saved Luffy. [[spoiler:Does it again during the Whitebeard War arc, showing up in the middle of the battle to end the war then and there, rescuing both Coby and Luffy (the latter indirectly) in the process]].
* BigGood: With [[spoiler:Whitebeard's death and Sengoku's retirement,]] Shanks and Dragon share this role in different ways. While Dragon acts as a check on the World Nobles and their rotten behaviour through the Revolutionary Army, Shanks instead is able to temper the machinations of the malevolent Emperors (especially Teach) and keep them from gaining too much influence in an already bleak world.
* ColorMotifs: Red. His famous epithet, "Red-Haired Shanks", comes from his hair color. He also wore the same hat that belonged to Gol D. Roger and is now in the custody of Luffy, both who are also associated with the color red.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: Shanks saw the possible damage that could be inflicted by Blackbeard, and encouraged Whitebeard not to poke him... but Whitebeard refused to do so. It later turns out that Whitebeard did tell Ace not to go after Blackbeard, with his protests falling on deaf ears, but he wasn't about to concede to Shanks (who is somewhat of an enemy) that he's right.
* DarkSkinnedRedhead: In the anime. He is well-known for his red hair as in the manga, and his skin is tanned.
* DeathGlare: Even sea monsters are afraid of an angry Shanks staring at them.
* DeusExitMachina: Got one ''off-screen''. Even though he hasn't been in the story lately, he did meet Whitebeard in his last appearance. So when the Whitebeard Pirates go off to save Ace, and Kaido attempts to take more of a piece of the New World, Shanks blocks him, allowing Whitebeard's rescue attempt to go uninterrupted.
* TheDreaded: His appearance at Marineford is enough to make ''everyone'' react with a mixture of shock and alarm, and his threat to fight anyone who wants to keep the battle going is enough to instantly end the violence. Let's put it this way: when ''[[KnightTemplar Akainu]]'' decides to call it a day rather than even attempt to deal with you after having previously demonstrated that he had no interest in stopping the battle, you have earned this title. Furthermore, while it's unknown just how things went down when he intercepted Kaido on his way to ambush Whitebeard while he was en route to Marineford, the end result was that even ''he'' didn't want to deal with Shanks and abandoned his original plan.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: His introduction in the very first chapter showed him as a fun-loving, genuinely NiceGuy who loves to party and willing to humble himself. That said, don't threaten his friends or it will end ''very'' badly for you and your crew.
* TheGadfly: It's clearly implied when Luffy was still very young, that he liked screwing with Luffy in harmless ways, just to get a chuckle from Luffy's reaction.
* GenerationXerox: Luffy is becoming more and more like him, rather than Roger, although Shanks notices the similarities in the two's personalities. However, Luffy is more passive while Roger [[spoiler:had a violent temper in battle that led (indirectly) to the deaths of both his FriendlyEnemy Whitebeard and his own son]].
* GoodIsNotSoft: In a series where permanent death is exceedingly rare, his EstablishingCharacterMoment includes him not batting an eye when one of his crew outright murdered one of the local riffraffs. And of course, mistaking his general happy-go-lucky and live-and-let-live attitude for softness is a bad idea.
* GoodScarsEvilScars: The scars across his eye? [[BigBad Blackbeard]] gave Shanks those scars before Shanks lost his arm and before Blackbeard gained his Devil Fruit powers.
* HandicappedBadass: Even with only his right arm, he's strong enough to stand up to the most powerful pirates in the world. Bear in mind that, by all indications, he's left-handed. Because of this, he doesn't interest Mihawk in sword fights anymore, though Mihawk at least visits him from time to time when there's news that may interest him. And according to WordOfGod, he's still as strong as he was before he lost his arm.
* HiddenDepths: Despite how simple-minded he appears at first, Shanks is a complex person with some rather difficult to understand views; for example, he believes if two people share very different views, it is better they go their separate ways.
** [[spoiler: Despite being one the four Pirate Emperors and one of the most notorious pirates in the world, he's apparently on speaking terms with the Gorosei.]]
* ImplausibleFencingPowers:
** When you're known to be Mihawk's former sparring partner and said spars are said to have shaken the Grand Line...
** When he and Whitebeard crossed blades, they cut the sky in half. ''The sky!''
** [[spoiler:He blocks Akainu's fist full of '''lava''' with his sword]]. And a quick reminder: '''He only has ''ONE ARM''''', ''and it's not his good arm''.
* KiAttacks: He's the series first-seen Haki user and strongly implied to be one of the best.
* KidHeroAllGrownUp: Along with Buggy, he was a cabin boy on Gold Roger's ship.
* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Takes losing his arm very well.
* MasterSwordsman: Repeat; ''just as strong as he was when he was whole'', with only his ''bad arm'' remaining.
* MellowFellow: Shanks is one of the most laid back characters in the world of One Piece, preferring to take his time as he and his crew travels around the world rather than rushing from one place to another.
* MrFanservice: Really handsome. More so when we see him after his introduction.
* MysteriousPast: Despite being one of the first characters introduced, Shanks's rise to power is some of the most mysterious aspects of One Piece's mythology with only mystifying tidbits to draw on. What's known is that he rised incredibly fast [[note]]Kaido, Big Mom and White Beard were Roger's contemporaries with territories of their own, Shanks was still fooling around in East Blue until 10 years ago[[/note]] without StoryBreakerPower. Yet he's well connected to the point that he can walk into Marie Geoise, talk to the Gorosei and walk out unharmed.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: [[SinisterShiv SHANKS.]] Subverted that his first appearance established him as a genuinely nice guy, and then Double Subverted when you learn that he's one of the Four Emperors, one that neither Marines, Warlords, or other Emperors want to directly antagonize. When he shows up late in the Marineford War and threatens to get in the brawl if they don't stop fighting, both sides decide to run away from him really fast.
* NiceGuy: Shanks is not cruel like many other pirate captains, nor does he rule over his crew with fear to gain respect. His friendly nature means he will not purposely seek to harm others, and he is able to make serious characters like [[TheStoic Dracule Mihawk]] join in with his fun.
* NiceHat: Luffy's straw hat was originally Shanks', and he was likewise known for wearing it. [[spoiler:Rayleigh]], in a flashback, revealed that the Straw Hat was originally [[spoiler:Roger]]'s.
* NoBadassToHisValet: Despite being [[TheDreaded widely feared across the seas]], there's one active pirate who is absolutely not afraid of him. And that is [[LaughablyEvil Buggy]]. Despite the ''huge'' gap between their abilities, [[VitriolicBestBuds it's just like the old times]] on the [[spoiler:Oro Jackson]] as far as he's concerned.
* NoodleIncident: For the longest time, readers were unaware of what had happened during the battle between Shanks and Blackbeard that would scar Shanks's left eye, just that it caused Shanks to be wary of Teach long before he gained any renown as a pirate -- which is why he warned Whitebeard against allowing Ace to continue going after him. Blackbeard's Vivre Card entry in the sixth databook eventually filled in some detail: [[spoiler:since he'd hidden his true strength when he was with the Whitebeards, Shanks underestimated Blackbeard until Blackbeard hit him with a surprise attack, using a claw grip weapon.]] When and where the fight happened, and what prompted it, remain unknown.
* OneManArmy: Come on. He's one of the Four Emperors.
* OnlyAFleshWound: [[ThePowerOfFriendship When you've saved the life of a little friend]], what's losing an arm to a Sea King anyway?
* PapaWolf: Don't threaten Luffy or you will pay. In fact, '''DON'T''' hurt his friends, period. He even lampshades this.
-->'''Shanks:''' ''(to Higuma)'' Listen up… You can pour drinks on me, you can throw food at me… You can even spit on me. I’ll just laugh that stuff off. But… Good reason or not… Nobody hurts a friend of mine.
* ParentalSubstitute: To Luffy. Shanks was honestly the closest Luffy had to a real father, seeing as his ''actual'' father [[spoiler:was out being a revolutionary]] and his grandfather was a well-intentioned yet terrible parental figure. They were so close, many honestly thought they would be revealed as father and son.
* PassingTheTorch: Saving Luffy's life was a form of this to him; when Whitebeard asks how he lost his arm, Shanks replies that he "bet it on a new generation."
* RedIsHeroic: Easily the most moral among the Emperors, and he is "Red-Haired" Shanks.
* RedOniBlueOni:
** He's the red to Mihawk's blue. Shanks being the warm-hearted, party-loving one, and Mihawk being the cold, serious one (though he can enjoy parties, just not to the same extent as Shanks).
** He's the blue to Buggy's red. Buggy being the easily angered and more emotional one while Shanks is more laid-back and composed.
* TheRival: To Mihawk before he lost his arm, though the two are on relatively good terms. He was also TheRival to Buggy as kids, but [[CantCatchUp not so much anymore]].
* ShockAndAwe: How Shanks fights in One Piece Pirate Warriors 3.
* SignatureLaugh: ''"Dahahahahaha!"''
* SmallRoleBigImpact: His appearances are infrequent and usually brief, but always important.
* TheSouthpaw: He was left handed before the Sea King changed that. This is implied by Mihawk when he states that they used to duel each other with their swords, but it's become a thing of the past since Shanks has lost his good arm.
* StaringDownCthulhu: Has scared a Sea King by staring at it.
* ThreateningMediator: Near the closing of the Whitebeard War, he shows up in Marineford and then threatens Whitebeard Pirates and the Marines to stop fighting by declaring that anyone who still wants to fight will have to fight against ''his'' side. And then the war promptly stops, with Shanks taking Whitebeard and Ace's corpses to be given proper burial.
* TokenGoodTeammate: The Four Emperors don't work together, but with [[spoiler:the death of Whitebeard]], Shanks is the only Emperor who's not a villain.
* TranquilFury: Considering how cheery Shanks usually is, it's scary when he gets angry.
* VitriolicBestBuds: The relationship between Shanks and Buggy is still this, no matter how much time has passed and no matter how much Buggy continues to deny it.
* WildCard: To the world at large, Shanks stands out being an utter enigma. While Whitebeard lives the life of classic pirate and keeps much of the more brutal aspects of the world in check, Kaido is a vicious warmonger and Big Mom wants to unite the world, no one is quite sure of what Shanks wants or even does. [[spoiler: The fact that he is apparently allowed to enter Mariejois to speak with the Gorosei only raises further questions.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Edward Newgate -- "Whitebeard"]]
!!Edward Newgate -- "Whitebeard"
!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/KinryuArimoto (JP), Creator/RBruceElliott (EN)
!!!'''Age:''' 72
!!!'''Birthday:''' April 6th
!!!'''Debut:''' Chapter 234 (Manga), Episode 151 (Anime)

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/edward_newgate_anime.png]]

->''"I am only one man with one heart... call me a demon, call me a monster... '''but I can't be the strongest forever!'''"''

Edward Newgate, better known as Whitebeard, was the captain of the [[Characters/OnePieceWhitebeardPirates Whitebeard Pirates]] and considered to be the most powerful of the Four Emperors ruling over the New World (the second half of the Grand Line), and the only person to have ever battled the Pirate King to a draw. With Roger's death he became the "[[WorldsStrongestMan Strongest Man in the World]]", and this reputation made him the most feared and respected person in the world. However, 22 years had passed since the Pirate King's death and, although Whitebeard was still greatly feared, he was getting old and the world was slowly changing and new and ambitious individuals were looking to rise to the top and take his place. He has eaten the Tremor-Tremor Fruit (''Gura Gura no Mi''), which allows to generate massive, destructive vibrations and trigger tsunamis and earthquakes.\\\

Despite his stubborn and prideful attitude and fearsome reputation, Whitebeard has a strong sense of morality and honor and believes that all pirates should follow a moral code. He regards every member of his crew and of his 43 allied crews as a son or daughter; in turn, he is regarded as a father figure by all of them as well. As such, there is a strong sense of camaraderie and kinship amongst his crew, and Whitebeard is willing to go to great lengths to protect his "sons".
-----
* AffectionateNickname: He was called "Pops" or "Old Man" (''Oyaji'', an informal variation of "father") by his crew.
* AnimeHair: In spite of all his badassery, under his bandana his hair is half moon shaped just like his moustache.
* ArrogantKungFuGuy: In his first few appearances in the series, Whitebeard comes off as seeming to think that any decision he makes is the correct one regardless of potential consequences, even brushing off warnings from fellow Emperor Shanks. However, this later turns out to be a JerkassFacade, as Whitebeard demonstrates that he isn't nearly as full of himself as he would like you to believe. Most likely he wanted to make sure he had a reputation for being fearsome and unreasonable to help keep the islands under his protection safe.
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: ''Definitely'' the strongest person alive. [[spoiler:The "alive" part is not anymore, though.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: While it is true that the Tremor-Tremor Fruit has incredibly fearsome power, it only adds to Whitebeard's awesomeness that he could use its power so effectively. To say it simply, this fruit transforms you into a ''walking natural disaster''. Were it in anyone else's hands, the fruit's overall effectiveness diminishes greatly as [[FridgeLogic you basically become the epicenter of a disaster]] so you would need great strength and competence just to make sure that the fruit won't end up killing ''[[FridgeHorror yourself]]'' in its own shockwaves.
* AwesomeMcCoolname: Edward Newgate has a kickass ring to it, doesn't it?
* BadassBoast: '''"''I. AM. WHITEBEARD''!"''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFaH7Q5UfnU Let's face it, it's all he needs.]]
* BadassLongcoat: Almost as badass as his moustache.
* BadassMoustache: ''Look'' at that thing! It's wider than his face, perfectly curved, and looks as sharp as a sword. '''Clearly''' not a moustache to be trifled with. [[NonIndicativeName It's also why he's called "Whitebeard"]] (the Japanese words for moustache and beard are the same). Also, look at the titular Turn-A Gundam. There's a reason he shares a mustache with what has been objectively stated to be the most powerful Gundam to date.
* BenevolentBoss: Whitebeard considers every single member of his crew, as well as his allies, his "sons". His strong love for his crew and allies traced all the way back to before he even had a crew, when he stated that the one thing he wanted more than anything was a family.
* BigGood: Considered as much of a threat as "The Revolutionary" Dragon, Whitebeard is known as "The World's Strongest Man" for being the only one that fought on par with the Pirate King Roger. However he's generally less active nowadays compared to the other two (especially given that one of them is dead). That aside, since pirates are one of the two biggest threats to the World Government, his moral foundation, which is wholly on the side of good and altruism, counters and conflicts with the WG's ruthless control.
* BladeOnAStick: He wields a bisento even taller than he is.
* BroughtDownToBadass: Blackbeard attacks Newgate with his darkness power, gloating about how it will nullify his earthquake ability... quite forgetting that he is facing the 18 foot tall World's Strongest Man with an even longer bisento. [[spoiler: Before Blackbeard and his crew decides to gun him down, just before Whitebeard attempts to lay a blow, his skin went reddish and steamy, in a very similar way to Luffy's Gear Second]]
* CallBack: A Devil Fruit with the power to make tsunamis was first mentioned by Morgan in the very first explanation of Devil Fruits we ever got in-series, that is, in the earliest anime episodes.
* CaptainColorbeard: '''White'''beard. Ironically, he has no beard.
* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: He blocked a two-handed downward swing from John Giant with only one hand on his bisento. He threw Vice Admiral Ronse, another Giant, several feet away. He extinguished the flames of one of Akainu's molten rocks with just a single breath. He prevented a massive paddle ship (captained by Squard) from further advancing using only one hand. When they say strongest man, ''this'' is what they mean. [[spoiler:Note that he does most of this ''after'' being stabbed right through the chest.]]
* CooldownHug: After his ally, Squard, stabbed him and accused him of selling out his allies thanks to the Marines [[BatmanGambit leaking false information to him]], Whitebeard gives him one, reassures him he would never abandon a single one of them, then charges into the fray to kick major ass.
* CoolOldGuy: More like ''coolest'' old guy in the series!
* CoveredWithScars: Whitebeard is covered with scars on every part of his body. Except his back: He never showed it to an enemy once.
* DeathByIrony: [[spoiler:All he wanted was a family, and one of his "sons" kills him. Admittedly he had already basically disowned the guy, but the point still stands.]]
* DeclarationOfProtection: Fishman Island used to be a CrapsackWorld, preyed on by pirates left and right, and the populace living in constant fear. All it takes is for him to declare the Island as ''his'' territory, and all the preying stopped there and then.
* DentedIron: Even being the WorldsStrongestMan doesn't stop this guy from getting his fair share of injuries. His years of pirating shows on his chest, which is almost literally more scar-tissue than skin. [[spoiler: But not his back.]]
* {{Determinator}}: Here's the best example. [[spoiler:''Half his face burned off?]]'' Doesn't matter. '''Akainu must die'''.
* DiedStandingUp: [[spoiler:To further prove how badass he is. Not even death can bring him down.]]
* TheDreaded: Pretty much a given. Whitebeard [[spoiler:, until his death,]] truly is the WorldsStrongestMan - all while being an old, half-dead, sickly shadow of his former self. Angering him is something that ''no one'', not even the World Government, wants to do. However, Blackbeard forces their hand, and they have to pool in all their resources, including the Admirals and the Seven Warlords of the Sea, just to ensure that they would ''compete'' in a war against him.
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:His final action, after spending the previous several chapters being stabbed, shot, bombarded, and having ''half his face melted off by lava'', is to fight Blackbeard one-on-one and [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown own him so thoroughly]] that the ''entire Blackbeard Pirates crew'' has to jump in before he stomps their captain like a bug. And even though all of that finally kills him... it still [[DiedStandingUp in't enough to make him fall]]. He even gets one last moment of awesome in his last moments. Even though he cannot move and is seconds from death, the very last thing he says, broadcast to the entire Sabaody Archipelago, is "One Piece exists!" This one phrase has the exact opposite effect that killing him was supposed to have]].
* EndOfAnAge: As the pirate who stood at the top of the Golden Age of Piracy, Whitebeard himself states that there is no ship to carry him to the next era. [[spoiler: His death specifically marks the end of the Golden Age of Pirates]].
* EvilPowerVacuum: While he isn't evil at all, [[spoiler:his death disrupted the BalanceOfPower in the world, causing a newer and ''much'' more vicious generation of pirates to hoist their jolly rogers. The man who benefited the most out of the vacuum? ''Blackbeard''.]]
* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler: Overlaps with DyingMomentOfAwesome and DiedStandingUp.]]
* FacepalmOfDoom: In the entire Marineford Arc, Whitebeard unleashed his Face Quake Attack on 2 giants, Akainu, and Blackbeard. ''None of them came close to successfully tanking it.''
* FacialHorror: [[spoiler: In the manga, the left side of his ''face'' is destroyed by one of Admiral Akainu's magma attacks.]]
* FamilyOfChoice: With him as the "father" and his crew as the "children." [[spoiler:As a dying Whitebeard's life flashed right before his very eyes, he expresses that in the end, this is all he ever wanted.]]
* FamousLastWords: '''"One Piece exists!"'''
* AFatherToHisMen: Every pirate in his crew is considered his son, and they consider each other brothers. And since this habit extends to his allies as well, there are definitely "daughters" like [[ActionGirl White Bay]].
* FoeTossingCharge: The Marines learn the hard way that {{Zerg Rush}}ing him doesn't work, as he wades through anyone not on the level of admirals.
* FormerlyFat: An SBS reveals that he was chubby- [[StoutStrength but muscular]]- as a child. As an adult, however, he was nothing but pure muscle.
* FriendlyRivalry: [[spoiler: With Roger. plenty of dialogue throughout the series implies they had plenty of encounters in the past, and Ace was worried that Whitebeard would be angry once he discovered he was Roger's son. Yet we discover that Whitebeard not only shared a drink with Roger at least once, Roger actually offered to tell him how to find Raftel (Whitebeard rejected it) and told him the meaning of "Will of D."]]
* FromBadToWorse: For the Marines. This line [[spoiler:after Ace's death]] from one of his crew should be a clue: "Oh man, [[UnstoppableRage Pops is pissed!]] '''''[[RoaringRampageOfRevenge EVERYONE GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE]]''!!!!'''"
* GeniusBruiser: Turns out Whitebeard's no slouch on [[TheChessmaster chess playing]]. He sees half of Sengoku's moves during the Marineford Arc coming; had he not, the Whitebeard Pirates and allies would have been finished far earlier than expected. It could also be said that both Sengoku and Whitebeard consider the other their WorthyOpponent in strategy.
* AGoodWayToDie: Standing straight up, having (nearly) avenged his "son's" death, and using his last words to keep the dreams of piracy alive.
* GreaterScopeParagon: We don't fully appreciate how massive his influence was until after he dies, but it quickly becomes clear that he was the only thing preventing the dominance of either the World Government or much, ''much'' worse pirates.
* HandicappedBadass: His utterly amazing rampage during Marineford? Yeah, remember that he did all that while ''terminally ill''.
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Whitebeard's final command was to order his allies to fall back, willing to take down the Marines all on his own]].
* {{Homage}}: His moustache, which is near-identical to [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090926165945/gundam/images/3/3d/Turn_A_Gundam.jpg the one sported by]] the Anime/TurnAGundam. The fact that they're both the strongest in their respective categories is probably another one.
* HonorBeforeReason:
** Goes to great lengths to avenge murdered crew members that would be downright insane were it not for the fact that he's, you know, '''Whitebeard'''.
** Before going to Marineford, he refused to continue wearing his heart support because he believed everyone there would pity him. His heart problems become an impediment on several occasions during the war.
* IJustWantToHaveFriends: As he put it himself in his younger days, he didn't care too much for treasure; instead, he wanted a family.
* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Due to his advanced age, and presumably from all of the injures he's taken over the course of a particularly long lifetime of piracy.
* IWasQuiteALooker: The most recent flashback shows he was a pretty handsome guy when he was young. Of course, he's not so much ugly today as his handsomeness has been replaced by pure badass.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Whitebeard can be very brusque to people outside of his main crew and/or his close allies. Despite this, he's a very good man with good intentions (that is, having a family and generally staying out of trouble), and he is fiercely (if not murderously) protective of his crew and allies.
* JerkassFacade: More of a "tough man facade", but he put this up after Ace went to search Blackbeard by himself. Whitebeard actually didn't want Ace to, but as he's already gone, he had to cover it by claiming that his family code reinforced what Ace did.
* KiAttacks: A confirmed Haki user.
* LanternJawOfJustice: Although a pirate, he's a good person and has a really prominent and manly chin.
* LargeAndInCharge: Whitebeard is literally ''three times'' larger than the average man, and unlike the other over-sized characters in ''One Piece'' he's properly proportioned.
* LetsGetDangerous: When Whitebeard stands up, you know the shit has hit the fan. When he starts walking towards you... '''RUN'''.
* LightIsGood: If their names and appearances hadn't been any more apparent, Whitebeard is the complete opposite of [[DarkIsEvil Blackbeard.]]
* ManlyTears: [[spoiler:Whitebeard gets especially saddened when he realizes that Ace is really going to die]].
* MeaningfulName: [[spoiler:His death]] was the '''gate''' to a '''new''' era. Newgate is also the name of a pair of (both long defunct) prisons in the London and the US (the first state prison in the country). Real life pirate William "Captain" Kidd spent some time in the London one.
* MegatonPunch: His powers allow him to ''punch'' the air so hard it ''CRACKS''.
* MightyGlacier: Due to his age and illness, he's rather slow in the foot, and occasionally have to catch his breath after running. Marco implied that he was once a LightningBruiser in his youth, and the current Whitebeard can at least still sneak behind Akainu to attack him. Let's not forget him intercepting a man who can move at the speed of light as said man was charging straight at Luffy.
* MookHorrorShow: Causes one of these while he rampaged across Marineford. You can see it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFaH7Q5UfnU here]], in which we get to look from a soldier's point of view while he flies in the atmosphere after being [[FoeTossingCharge tossed]] by Whitebeard.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: The only way to describe what he does to [[spoiler:Akainu after he killed Ace]] in the anime. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the poor bastard.
* NonIndicativeName: Or nickname, in this case. Despite being named "Whitebeard", he has no beard. This is averted in the original language since, in Japanese, "beard" and "moustache" are spelled with the same word, so his name fits his moustache.
* NotAfraidToDie: In an SBS, it is revealed that, before Marineford's war, [[spoiler: he ripped off all the medical devices that had been keeping his health stable and left his medical team in a safe place, to not allowing it to fight, because, by this point, he's ready to die.]]
* OlderThanTheyLook: This man ''does not'' look 72 years old.
* OneManArmy: Let us be blunt. During the battle in Marineford, this man does more damage to the Marines than his entire crew and his allies '''combined'''.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Refers to his stab wound by Squad, after the latter tries to pull a RedemptionEqualsDeath, as "a little scratch", and [[spoiler:having nearly half of his head burnt clean off by Akainu merely gets him to speak one sentence in TranquilFury mode: "I'm just getting started"]].
* PapaWolf: Never kill or threaten to kill a member of his crew; his wrath over hurting his men is infamous in-universe. Unless you want a war, you have a high probability of losing... ''if'' you have the entire planet's military force backing you up. If not, it's a guarantee.
* ParentalAbandonment: Implied, because even though [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130602192117/onepiece/images/0/08/Kid_Edward_Newgate.png even as kid he was still amazingly strong]], and could take anything he wanted, he eventually decided the greatest treasure he could own is a family.
* PersonOfMassDestruction: The Tremor-Tremor Fruit grants him the power to create shockwaves powerful enough to "break the Earth apart". That means earthquakes on land, tsunamis at sea, and god help you if he wants to give your face a taste of that power.
* PlotTriggeringDeath: [[spoiler:His demise causes the birth of a new era of piracy.]]
* RasputinianDeath: [[spoiler:Half his face melted off, slashed and stabbed 267 times, hit by more than 152 bullets and 46 cannon shots, ''all in one battle''... but when the jacket comes off, there is not a single scar on his back, as he ''never'' showed it to the enemy]].
* RatedMForManly: UpToEleven. He's not just the WorldsStrongestMan, he's also AFatherToHisMen, even towards the one who stabbed him.
* RedBaron: He's always referred as "Whitebeard", never as "Edward Newgate".
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: [[spoiler:After Ace's death, he beats the every loving crap out of Akainu and nearly sunk Marineford into the sea. He then nearly splits Blackbeard in half for killing one of his sons and indirectly killing Ace by turning him in to the marines]].
* RuleOfSymbolism:
** Being an "Emperor of the Seas" and [[spoiler:having a Devil Fruit that causes massive tsunamis and earthquakes]] are obvious references to the Greek god Poseidon. In the lead up to the Marineford War, Garp even tells an imprisoned Ace that they have angered "The King of the Sea."
** His bisento may be another one, being a possible parallel of Poseidon's trident.
** So is his extreme PapaWolf mannerism, as Poseidon was quite possibly the most fiercely protective father in the Greek Pantheon.
** He was known to be ChildhoodFriends with Neptune, the ruler of Fishman Island. He also named Fishman Island his territory to protect it.
** Poseidon was also known as the Earth Shaker. Quite suggestive, no?
** The people of the One Piece world fear him because of his earthquake powers. Just like the Japanese themselves have a deep-rooted fear of earthquakes and tsunamis, for obvious reasons.
* SacrificialLion: [[spoiler: One of the few characters to die in ''One Piece'' outside of a flashback, and his death was a turning point in the pirate world.]]
* ShockwaveClap: Thanks to his Devil Fruit power, he can even create quakes in the ''air''. He creates shockwaves by punching the air, causing it to ''crack''.
* ShutUpHannibal: Teach tries to run his mouth when they meet [[spoiler: at Marineford.]] Whitebeard responds with a spear to the shoulder.
* SignatureLaugh: "Gurararara!"
* SphereOfPower: He can create a "Quake Bubble" around his fist or the blade of his bisento.
* StayInTheKitchen: When Oda was asked in an [=SBS=] why there were no female members of the Whitebeard Pirates who fought at Marineford, he explained that the crew's only females were nurses because Whitebeard's set of morals led him not to allow women on his ship as fighters.
* SuperDrowningSkills: As with all Devil Fruit users he would sink like a stone in water, but he's not stupid enough to allow himself to be put in such a situation.
* SuperpowerLottery: WordOfGod is that the powers of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, a Paramecia-class, are '''no less''' than those of a ''Logia''. Even excluding that, the man is downright impressive.
* SuperToughness: For this man, ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill is the minimum amount of force required to even make him ''flinch''. Sword to the gut? That tickles. Several more? Tch. Cannon to the face? A pebble. ''[[spoiler:Half his fucking face melted off!]]''? Minor annoyance.
* SwordBeam: He can infuse his bisento with the Tremor-Tremor Fruit's powers to send a massive shockwave towards anything he swings it at. You ''do not'' want to be in the way.
* ThatsGottaHurt: Getting a face full of his Devil Fruit powers.
* TranquilFury: [[spoiler:[[PapaWolf Goes into this state after Ace is killed by Akainu]] and then proceeds [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge to return the favor.]]]]
* TrueCompanions: For the WorldsStrongestMan, who could have had anything this world had to offer... this is all he ever wanted. He succeeded.
* UnstoppableRage: When the twenty-three Marine ships watching him are instantly annihilated after the news that Ace is about to be executed, you know the World Government fucked up, right? And after [[spoiler:Ace is killed]], he proceeds to [[CurbStompBattle beat the shit out of Akainu]] and ''[[spoiler:cut the entire damn island in half]]''!
* UnwittingPawn:
** Sengoku tries to make him one by turning his beloved sons against him. [[SubvertedTrope It backfires magnificently]].
** [[spoiler:PlayedStraight with Blackbeard since him giving Ace to the marines lured Whitebeard out and weakened him to the point that Blackbeard could kill him and take his power.]]
* {{Vibroweapon}}: Thanks to his power, he's able to weaponize ''vibration itself'', like how he can cause a "hypocentrum" inside John Giant's body with his punch. He can also use it the more traditional way, by imbuing his bisento with his power to increase its power tremendously, such that with one swing of it he can mow down ''dozens'' of Marine mooks at once.
* WalkingShirtlessScene: The unbuttoned-top kind.
* WorfHadTheFlu:
** Since the beginning of the war, Whitebeard was already foot-and-a-half in the grave thanks to his illness. Reason why he took his time to join the fight: his movements were extremely slow and measured, his dodging abilities non-existent as put by Marco; it should have been impossible for Squard to stab Whitebeard, and in several instances he had to stop to catch his breath, [[HollywoodHeartAttack his heart barely working right]]. That rampage was done by a half-blind, half-deaf, arthritic 72 year old shadow of its former self. WorldsStrongestMan indeed. You may now shit yourself as you imagine what this guy would have looked like in his prime at full strength and pissed off.
** It's stated that the only reason he didn't end [[spoiler:Blackbeard]] then and there was because his body just couldn't go any further, forcing him to pause instead of landing the finishing blow before his target could recover. Had he been in a little better shape, [[spoiler:Blackbeard]] would be dead.
* WorldsStrongestMan: Literally referred to as such, and he more than lives up to it. Back when Roger was alive, the two were contenders for the title. Though it's noted that being the "Strongest Pirate" isn't exactly the same thing as being literally the most physically powerful.
* WorthyOpponent: To Sengoku. Also, the commander-in-chief of the Marines says he was the best of the pirates.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Kaido "of the Beasts"]]
!!Kaido "of the Beasts"
!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/TesshoGenda (JP)
!!!'''Birthday:''' May 1st
!!!'''Debut:''' Chapter 795 (Manga), Episode 739 (Anime)

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kaido_anime_6.png]]

->''"Joker! You better hurry the hell up! I don't care if this boring world is destroyed! '''Let's start the greatest war the world has ever seen!'''"''

Kaido is the general of the [[Characters/OnePieceBeastPirates Beast Pirates]] and the third of the Four Emperors to be mentioned, and the last one to make an appearance. Consequently, he's one of the more enigmatic figures of the series. The deepest insight we have to his character comes from Trafalgar Law, who called Kaido ''the'' strongest "creature" in existence. Not man, "creature," so he's ''at least'' on the same level as Whitebeard. Even so, Kaido is regarded as human. It is also revealed that he and Big Mom knew one another in the past and that he owes her a debt from back then. He has an immensely powerful Devil Fruit which allows him to assume the form of a dragon, a king among beasts. In this form, Kaido's threat level becomes maddening.\\\

The first thing we learned about Kaido is that he's the one who sent Gecko Moria over the deep end, so he's far from a pleasant fellow. As a testament to his strength, he tried to make a grab for power by attacking ''Whitebeard'' before he arrived at Marineford, but Shanks prevented him from doing so.\\\

Following the War of the Best, Kaido's coming into conflict with a bunch of younger, ballsier pirates. Drake attacked one of his favorite islands just after the WarArc, while Law's allied with Luffy in order to take him down. At least in part because of that, Kaido's assembling an army of Zoan Users from the artificial SMILE fruits developed by Caesar. Doflamingo, under the alias of Joker, is the one supplying the SMILE fruits to Kaido.\\\

He's allied with Kurozumi Orochi, the shogun of the Wano Country, and currently resides in Onigashima, an island in the country.
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* TheAlcoholic: A very emotional example, as his temperament can swing from sorrowful to jolly and friendly, or enraged while drunk, which is unfortunate for any mooks of his who say something wrong. He is also constantly swigging down a massive jug of sake and guzzling the booze to a truly inhuman degree.
* AmbiguouslyHuman: Law calls him "the strongest ''creature'' on earth", as opposed to the "strongest man". Big Mom refers to him as "that thing" when she dismissed Luffy's claim that he'll defeat Kaido. [[spoiler:It is possible that his dragon form is not the result of a Mythical Zoan, and is indeed his true form.]]
* ArchEnemy: To the Kozuki clan (well, [[spoiler:just Momonosuke]] at this point considering that Kaidou [[spoiler:killed his parents]]). He's also more than likely this to the Mink Tribe by virtue of one of his CoDragons, Jack, trashing Zou. He's also this to Gecko Moria for killing his beloved crew; when Moria was running Thriller Bark and created Oars, Kaido was his primary target.
* ArcVillain: One of the main antagonists in the Wano Country Arc, along with Orochi.
* ArrogantKungFuGuy: Is so confident in his power that he ''refuses'' to take Law and Luffy seriously even after they destroyed his SMILE operation. He also goes so far as to call [[LightningBruiser Doflamingo]] of all people "weak"; to be fair though, from what we've seen, Kaido is likely justified in how he views himself. [[spoiler: And after defeating a 100% healthy, Gear Fourth Luffy in ''one-shot'', it's ''clear'' that he's justified in how he views himself]].
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: Following [[spoiler:Doflamingo's defeat and thus the cessation of producing artificial Devil Fruits]], Kaido can't build up his army anymore stronger than it is already - so he's preparing to unleash it.
** In an almost-literal example, [[spoiler: Luffy sucker-punching him and laying into him with everything Gear Fourth can dish out only serves to sober him up. [[SingleStrokeBattle His retaliation is swift, brief and brutal.]]]]
* BadassArmy: One made of [[spoiler:artificially-created Zoan fruit users]] numbering 500, in short an army [[spoiler:of beastmen, which may be the reason for his moniker]].
* BadassMustache: Has a Fu Manchu that hangs to his belt.
* BadBoss: At least he is while drunk. One of his men merely suggesting that they should take Law and Luffy seriously was enough for Kaido to literally send him flying off the island in a rage. Later, he also drunkenly vaporizes several of his men with his dragon breath (along with half of the town around them, for that matter) while attempting to hit Luffy.
* BassoProfundo: Creator/TesshoGenda provides the deep, booming voice of Kaido in the anime.
* BigBadEnsemble: Of the Emperor Saga, with Big Mom. As of the Wano Country Arc, he has become the main antagonist of the story in it's current state.
* BloodKnight: Seeks to cause, and of course, participate in, the war to end all wars.
* BreathWeapon: [[spoiler:His dragon form can breathe a powerful burst of flames that doesn't just incinerate, but totally ''obliterate'' Oden Castle from quite a distance away.]]
* CarryABigStick:
** He wields a very large mace, and he's able to send a {{Mook}} flying off an island with one swing... through the roof... of what appeared to be a cave.
** He [[spoiler: oneshoted Luffy's Gear Fourth using the same mace.]]
* CurbStompCushion: InvertedTrope in his first fight with Luffy. [[spoiler:Luffy managed to land some good hits on him at the beginning of their battles rather than the end. He was still one-shotted later.]]
* DeathGlare: He gave Luffy one near the end of chapter 923. [[spoiler:He was furious that Luffy declared himself a King.]]
* DeathSeeker: In his life, he has survived forty execution attempts and over ten thousand methods of torture. At this point, he attempts new ways to kill himself simply to find out if he ''can'' be killed, and his initial in-person introduction comes in the form of him throwing himself ''off of a Sky Island'' and surviving mostly uninjured.
* DoomMagnet: Every time he's mentioned, something bad ''will'' happen (or ''is'' happening).
* DragonsAreDemonic: Kaido of the Four Emperors, [[WorldsStrongestMan known as the strongest "creature" in the world]], [[spoiler:takes the form of a massive East Asian dragon]], and rules his territory as a near merciless EvilOverlord.
* DragonsUpTheYinYang: [[spoiler:He has a Mythical Zoan-type Devil Fruit that lets him shapeshift into an [[https://i.imgur.com/XbDefK6.jpg Eastern Dragon]].]]
* TheDreaded:
** Gecko Moria wasn't willing to fight him again for {{Revenge}} until he amassed a thousand-strong zombie army and had a trump card in the zombie of one of the most powerful giants in history on his side.
** Doflamingo would rather face the wrath of the Admirals than that of Kaido. Yes, the same Doflamingo that, as a kid, swore to an angry crowd that was shooting arrows at him that he was going to survive and kill them all one by one. Let that sink in for a moment.
** Kid and his alliance had plans to take on Shanks, showing they weren't afraid to take on one of the Emperors. When Kaido literally dropped out of the sky onto their island, they were immediately terrified, making him dreaded even by the standards of other Emperors.
** If it weren't clear enough, even ''Big Mom''- yes, '''[[PersonOfMassDestruction BIG MOM]]'''- refers to Kaido as a "thing" and ''laughs at the idea of Luffy being able to defeat him''. And she says this in ''spite'' of the fact that she knows Luffy beat Cracker and has the strength to clash with her own haki-enhanced elbow strike, so it really speaks volumes on Kaido's power even in relation to the other Emperors.
*** Though to be fair, she is still completely confident that Luffy and the alliance have no chance of beating her either and states unequivocally she could have defeated Kaido, Shanks, and Whitebeard with the armies of Elbaf behind her so how she views Kaido is up for debate. That and later interactions seem to show a bit of NoBadassToHisValet between the two of them [[spoiler: probably because they were members of the same crew]].
* DrowningMySorrows: A frequent coping strategy of his.
* DubNameChange: In the official VIZ Media translation, his nickname is the '''"King of the Beasts"'''
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Having effortlessly survived trying to commit suicide by jumping off a Sky Island, then yelling for war after he rises up.
* EvilLaugh: Worororo.
* EvilOverlord: Kaido seems to have dozens of underlings, allies, and islands under his control, like most of the Emperors. What separates him from all of the others, including Linlin, is that it's implied he's very much a traditional one.
* EvilVersusEvil: Kaido vs. Moria, though it's implied Moria wasn't so bad back then.
* FatalFlaw: [[TheAlcoholic Alcoholism]] and [[ArrogantKungFuGuy Arrogance]]. As the undisputed WorldsStrongestMan and a NighInvulnerable Tank with enough power to put ''billion-bounty pirates'' down in one swing ([[spoiler:read: Luffy]]), Kaido himself is pretty much the only thing standing in the way of his ambitions.
* {{Foil}}: To fellow Emperor Big Mom: They are Emperors with the least personal connections to Luffy and the last to be shown. They play roughly the same role in the story. They are both epitome of Morganian pirates. However, they contrasted each other in important ways:
** Visually, Kaido is extremely muscular, the idea of an alpha male turn UpToEleven. Big Mom is obese and radiates an air of decadence.
** Kaido has a ''drinking'' problem and his EstablishingCharacterMoment is drunken rampage laced with BlackComedy. Big Mom has an ''eating'' disorder and her rampage was PlayedForDrama.
** Kaido is a PerpetualFrowner while Big Mom is a PerpetualSmiler.
** Big Mom is (when sane) PragmaticEvil with a capitalistic mindset. Kaido is all about destruction and death to sate his boredom and find something that can kill him.
** Big Mom is hedonistic while Kaido is a DeathSeeker.
** Totland, especially Whole Cake Island is a trippy CrapsaccharineWorld while most of Wano, especially Onigashima is straight up CrapsackWorld.
** In term of influence, everything about Big Mom is an AliceAllusion, a Western Literature. Everything about Kaido is distinctively traditional Japanese: from the {{Wutai}} setting, to his Eastern dragon power, to the WholePlotReference to Japanese classics such as Momotaro and 47 Ronins.
* FunctionalAddict: Despite being a raging alcoholic, he's managed to actively and effectively rule over Wano with an iron fist for over 20 years without interruption. It helps that he's ''way'' too stupidly strong for anybody to hurt him even when he's drunk, though. [[spoiler: Luffy learns this the hard way when he launches a barrage on a drunken Kaido, doing ''no'' damage and earning himself a non-lethal OneHitKill for his troubles]].
* GenreBlind:
** [[spoiler: Breaking the spirit of a StockShonenHero whose most defining trait is TheDeterminator? An impossible task. Throwing him in the same jail cell with his less moral StockShonenRival who Kaido also failed to break which would guarantee an EnemyMine situation? Yeah, Kaido just sabotaged himself.]]
** [[spoiler: He also decides to just ''let a [[KryptoniteFactor seastone-weakened]] Law go'' (Luffy's strongest and most cunning remaining ally) because he'd [[TheAlcoholic rather go get wasted]] and doesn't consider Law enough of a threat to bother with him at the moment. While he's not wrong in assuming that he could easily destroy Law at any point, you've got to think that just letting him go is gonna come back to bite him in the ass very quickly]].
* GreaterScopeVillain: He is originally this during the Thriller Bark Arc, as it was his actions that were responsible for making Moria the villain he had become. He's also been this for much of the conflict since the Straw Hats entered the New World (after Fishman Island), as Caesar Clown, Doflamingo, and Jack, three of the most prevalent antagonists post-timeskip, have both been working for him, the latter in fact being one of his executive officers. This makes him the driving antagonistic force of the saga thus far. As the story progresses, a battle with him seems inevitable: Trafalgar Law is determined to piss him off so much that Kaido will have to step in personally.
** As of the Wano Country Arc, he has fully taken over as the current BigBad of the narrative.
* HairTriggerTemper: This man's temper and stubbornness is so legendary that even Doflamingo fears him.
* HornedHumanoid: Once we see him in the flesh he has horns not unlike those we've seen on Oars. They're also a part of his pirate emblem.
* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: [[spoiler:He can transform into a massive Eastern Dragon, allowing him to fly and filling the sky with dark clouds wherever he goes.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: The more we learn of him, the worse he seems to be. For comparison, Shanks is friendly as long as you don't mess with his friends, Whitebeard operates under a JerkassFacade, Blackbeard genuinely cares about his crew, and Big Mom is violently unstable and prone to DisproportionateRetribution, but is legitimately psychotic and unable to understand that her actions are beyond the pale, as well as having a truly tragic backstory. This guy was willing to disrupt the state of the world at a chance of grabbing power from Whitebeard; threw Moria past the DespairEventHorizon by murdering his entire crew, turning Moria into the {{Jerkass}} he is today; and has a temper so legendary that ''Doflamingo'' gives everything up in order to ''survive''. There hasn't been one redeeming thing mentioned about him, ''at all''. Upon his first in-the-flesh appearance, he's demanding [[spoiler:a war to end all wars to destroy this "mundane world" and possibly find something [[DeathSeeker capable of killing him]]]].
* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler:His Zoan form is a ''huge'' eastern dragon. In Chapter 922 it's shown that Luffy in Gear Fourth form is smaller than his ''eyeball''.]]
* KillEmAll: He massacred Moria's entire crew back in the day, hence why Moria is the way he is now.
* LargeAndInCharge: Absolutely ''massive'' and may or may not be a giant or have giant blood, going by a slight resemblance to Oars.
* LargeHam: The polar opposite of his right hand man [[SoftSpokenSadist Jack]] when it comes to how they express their anger. So far, all of Kaido's screen time has featured him shouting in a rage at some point.
* LightningBruiser: Perfectly demonstrated during his first fight with Luffy. [[spoiler:Kaido, in his dragon and humanoid form, took no damage from Luffy's barrages of techniques who was using Geard 3rd ''and'' Gear 4th. It is then shown that Kaido could have easily dodged those attacks when he speedblitz'd Luffy and took him out with one swing of his mace while Luffy was still using Gear 4th.]]
* TheManTheyCouldntHang: They've tried to execute him 40 times, including by hanging. It didn't work; his intro says that the ropes and chains broke, and the spears and guillotines shattered.
* MeaningfulName: His name can translate into "Church" or "Temple", and wears a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimenawa Shimenawa]] for a belt.
* MoodSwinger: When drunk, he can very easily go from weepy and sorrowful to violent and abusive to whimsically friendly and cheerful at the drop of a hat.
* MysteriousPast: It seems he's had an arrangement with Big Mom in the past, to the point that she claims he has a debt to her. Kaido claims that the debt was from long ago, but she insists it's a life-long debt.
* MythicalMotifs: Eastern Dragons. He has a massive black dragon tattoo on his person and the general invincibility associated with them. [[spoiler: It’s also his Zoan type.]]
* NighInvulnerable:
** His first onscreen appearance has him ''jump off of a Sky Island''. The ground is more hurt than he is. In fact, he's so invulnerable, he considers suicide attempts a ''hobby''. Dude had been captured and executed numerous times to no avail and survived, and has shrugged off ''thousands'' of different forms of torture. Though, he ''has'' been defeated (seven times, in fact) and if the rather large scar on his right-side is any indication, he ''can'' be injured. The circumstances concerning both of these situations are still unknown, however.
** [[spoiler: In his first encounter with Luffy, a barrage of Elephant Gatling (which nearly destroyed the Fishman-Island-sized Noah ship) and a barrage of Kong's Organ (Gear Fourth's version of the above) only sobered him up and made him angry.]]
* NoNonsenseNemesis: [[spoiler: Even at his drunkest, he doesn't play games. As soon as he reached Luffy and Law, he tried to incinerate them with a blast of fire, and when Luffy managed to punch him out of his stupor and forced him to revert to his base form, he simply knocked his ass out with one kanabo swing. No exposition, no small talk, no bullshit, just action.]]
* NoodleIncident: What went down when Shanks confronted Kaido? What happened when Kaido fought Moria back in the day? How was ''anyone'' able to try and hang him?
* NotHyperbole: There is a very good reason Kaido carries the title of "King of the Beasts". [[spoiler:He's a DRAGON.]]
* NotMeThisTime: Caesar Clown boasts that Kaido is backing his experiments and that he's interested in SMILE - The Artificial Devil Fruits, to build his army with it. Does that mean he's also behind the gigantification experiments on children? Nope. Clown outright said that the [[ForScience experiments were to see if he could do it]] as a triumph to his own brilliance in succeeding in the World Government's incomplete pet projects. [[spoiler:It later turns out that the gigantification experiments were financed by Big Mom. Caesar Clown later admits to himself that the results Big Mom wanted are practically impossible]].
* OneHitKill: [[spoiler: He effortlessly defeats a Gear Fourth Luffy in one blow from his mace, treating Luffy's most ''powerful'' form as a mild annoyance at best]].
* TheOnlyOneAllowedToKillYou: Has developed this animosity toward Luffy to the point that he won't even let Big Mom have first crack at him!
* OneManArmy: According to Law, he's on the same level of power as ''Whitebeard'', and that was the guy said to be able to destroy the entire world.
* {{Oni}}: Invoked in his design, as he carries [[CarryABigStick a huge club]], loves his booze, much smarter than his brutish look suggests, and makes his stronghold in Onigashima (lit. Island of the Ogres).
* OurDragonsAreDifferent: [[spoiler:He's a Mythical Zoan user who is able to take the form of a gigantic East Asian dragon... [[AmbiguouslyHuman if that isn't his true form in the first place]].]]
* PerpetualFrowner: Whenever the Emperors were mentioned early on, his various prototype silhouettes always sported {{Slasher Smile}}s; however, when we see his final design in person, he constantly has an angry grimace instead.
* PersonOfMassDestruction:
** During his introduction it's said he's destroyed 9 ships built specifically to hold him and it's been shown that '''Doflamingo''' would rather face the Admirals instead of him.
** [[spoiler: His dragon form can destroy cities with ease.]]
* PragmaticVillainy: [[spoiler:He doesn't kill opponents who are exceptionally strong, as that would be a waste of their power, and instead he has their will crushed so they can [[ReforgedIntoAMinion be made into formidable soldiers for his crew]]]].
* RedBaron: Kaido ''Of The Beasts'' (Or ''King Of The Beasts'' in the English translation) doesn't sound like the type of guy you want to trifle with.
* ScaledUp: [[spoiler: He apparently has a dragon-model Zoan-type devil fruit, as he appears at the end of Chapter 921 as a truly ''massive'' serpentine dragon.]]
* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil:
** Quite literally. The next Emperor shown tends to be more antagonistic than the last. Everyone else has ''some'' redeeming qualities, even if slightly. Kaido doesn't appear to have ''any''.
** As far as his power level is concerned, he is frequently described as the strongest "creature" in the world; defeating him is 30% at best if you're Law and Luffy, and that's ''after'' slamming him and Doflamingo into each other. Just to make everyone crap their pants, the novels explain that Kaido could beat ''Whitebeard'' in a one on one fight. [[spoiler: Luffy's strongest attacks mostly just sobered him up and pissed him off, and one kanabo strike had Luffy out for the count.]]
* SparingTheAces: He'll accept anyone into his crew as long as they are strong enough. Those that accept his initial offer will get a pardon for all offenses committed against him. Those that don't will receive an [[TwoPlusTortureMakesFive educational course]].
* SpikesOfVillainy: Wears spiked bands around his wrists.
* StupidEvil: He's actually pretty smart but unfortunately spends most of his time getting himself drunk which then leads to stupid choices like rampaging through a town inhabited by his factory workers.
* SuddenlySober: A good thrashing is all that's needed to instantly snap him out of a drunken sober, much to his disappointment though since he'd rather stay drunk.
* SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum: Kaido's actions basically amount to this. He's a DeathSeeker who has [[NighInvulnerable survived dozens of execution attempts]] and is not even able to kill himself. This being the case, he's decided to start the biggest world war ever just in the hopes that someone strong enough to kill him will show up.
* SuperpoweredMooks: He has an army of [[spoiler:Artificial Zoan Devil Fruit users]] numbering around ''500''.
* SuperToughness: Doflamingo redefined ''One Piece'''s definition of the concept over the course of some thirty chapters with all the punishment Luffy and Law put him through. Kaido redefined it in ''one'' chapter by jumping off a sky island. Justified given that was just the latest in a long strong of things that ''should'' have killed him and didn't. [[spoiler: Luffy attacked him with a barrage that probably could have fucked up an Admiral and was only able to sober him up and piss him off. It didn't do a damn thing to him otherwise.]]
* TattooedCrook: His left arm is covered in scale-like tattoos that stretch all the way up to his chest, though its hard to tell if it reaches his back too through all his hair. [[FridgeLogic Exactly how a needle got through his skin when spears and other bladed weapons can't is unclear.]]
* TwoPlusTortureMakesFive: He makes people he considers potential underlings into slaves then force them to do grueling labor in an attempt to break their spirit and make them join his crew.
* VillainTakesAnInterest: [[spoiler: Though Kaido is thoroughly unimpressed by Luffy's inability to hurt him, he ''is'' impressed enough by his indomitable fighting spirit and raw strength that he decides to try [[ReforgedIntoAMinion breaking his will and making him one of his soldiers.]]]]
* WalkingShirtlessScene: He only wears a furry cape or CoatCape and his spiky bracelets on his torso.
* {{Weredragon}}: [[spoiler:His Zoan form is an Eastern Dragon.]]
* WeUsedToBeFriends: Seems to be this sort of relationship with Big Mom, as a conversation they had over Den Den Mushi indicates that at one time or another, those two ruled the seas together, but for some reason, they parted ways, generally leaving each other alone to their own devices. However, there is immense friction when one deals with the other and what they want interferes with the other's wishes, causing tension so bad that it makes the Marines panic because they know any clash between an Emperor is almost impossible to stop and is sure to cause huge waves throughout the New World.
* WorfHadTheFlu: [[spoiler: During his very first fight with Luffy, Kaido is so drunk off his ass that at one point, he passes out and gives Luffy the opportunity to score some free hits...[[SubvertedTrope and then he gets up and smacks Luffy once, knocking him out cold.]] Keep in mind, he was using a blunt weapon and Luffy was in ''Gear 4.'']]
* WorldsStrongestMan: Law describes him as the strongest "creature" in existence, and that his chances of defeating him, even with his alliance with Luffy, are 30% at ''best''. This moniker of "Strongest Creature" is also used in the narration upon his first appearance in the flesh. The novels explain that this comes in reference to his own raw strength and durability, implying that even ''Whitebeard'' could lose to him. The ''only'' person who is known to have given him pause is Shanks, who made him back off and drop his plan to ambush Whitebeard as he traveled to Marineford, and even ''that'' was more likely a matter of Kaido just not wanting to go to the trouble of dealing with him and then being too worn-out to tackle Whitebeard after him.
** [[spoiler:It is possible he is not a man at all, and the "Strongest creature" moniker is because he is a dragon.]]
-->'''Narrator:''' People always say if you fight one-on-one, Kaido ''will'' win. Because by land, air, or sea... he is the strongest creature alive!
* WouldHitAGirl: As [[spoiler: Lady Speed and Tama]] can attest.
* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: Poor Tama...]]
* YouDontLookLikeYou: You see his picture, right? The anime has ''two'', both of which are completely different not only to themselves, but to the original silhouette. The first gives him [[http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130628024351/onepiece/images/3/38/Garp_Speaks_About_The_Yonko.png an upturned black collar, a cross-shaped nose and crescent eyes]]. The second [[http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130131055555/onepiece/images/d/dd/Yonko_Infobox.png adds wavy hair, V-shaped eyes, a pointier nose and an elongated chin/forehead]].
* ZigzagPaperTassel: Going along with his name being translated to temple, he wears a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimenawa Shimenawa]] adorned with these as a belt.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Charlotte Linlin -- "Big Mom"]]
!!Charlotte Linlin -- "Big Mom"
!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/ToshikoFujita (JP, 1st voice), Creator/MamiKoyama (JP, 2nd voice), Pam Dougherty (EN)
!!!'''Age:''' 68
!!!'''Birthday:''' February 15th
!!!'''Debut:''' Chapter 651 (Manga), Episode 571 (Anime)

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/charlotte_linlin_anime_6.png]]

->''"Bring me sweets! If you do, I'll make a promise with you! A promise of peace! And of a dream country! If you listen to what I say, you will all live happily! And if you don't listen... you're being selfish! '''And I'm gonna kill you!'''"''

The captain of the [[Characters/OnePieceBigMomPirates Big Mom Pirates]] and the third introduced of the Four Emperors and the last to be named, Big Mom is the only female member. A sixty-eight-year old woman who is abnormally huge and has an incredible capacity for destruction, Charlotte Linlin has been in the business of piracy since she was a tyke, and became widely feared by all for her utter lack of restraint, never learning how to reel in her freakish strength. But the one thing that people fear about her above anything else is her boundless appetite, which often propels her into hunger-crazed rampages. She has eaten the Soul-Soul Fruit (''Soru Soru no Mi''), which allows her to take portions of souls out of a person (reducing their lifespan) and redistribute them into inanimate objects and even animals, granting them sentience and/or anthropomorphism.\\\

She's the queen of the nation of Totto Land, which comprises Whole Cake Island (her base of operations) and its surrounding archipelago of 34 islands, and the incredibly polygamous matriarch of the daunting Charlotte Family. She offers her protection to islands if they provide enough candy to feed her sweet tooth, but [[DisproportionateRetribution watch out]] if she's not satisfied. It is revealed that she and Kaidou were crewmates once.\\\

Her notoriety is ''not'' enough to deter Eustass Kid from destroying two of her allied ships after the TimeSkip. Nor was it enough to deter Monkey D. Luffy from personally challenging her for control over Fishman Island, which she accepted. This does NOT mean she isn't as dangerous as the other three. On the contrary, out of the Emperors shown, she's by far the most crazy, ruthless, and overall '''terrifying''', and among other things, is introduced by showing her eating some of her own men like snacks, because she'll devour virtually anything that can pass through her lips, even without meaning to.\\\

As a result of forcing one of Luffy's crew members to follow her jurisdiction, Luffy dropped everything and made her priority number one. So did a few other major names among pirates, including at least three who seek to directly betray her. However, if there's one thing Big Mom hates more than anything else, it's being scorned by her own family and allies. It's not just a proven cause of a death, but ''comprehensive blood purge.'' This is enough to make the whole lot of them agree it's better to ''avoid'' a direct one-on-one battle with her and come after her from afar if they can help it, but she has also has hundreds of highly capable and extremely dangerous family members at her disposal, all of which comprise a massive hitch in their plans.\\\

She holds the record for being the youngest person in the series to receive a bounty, gaining a 50,000,000 berry bounty at just ''six years old''. Her last known bounty after that (as an older child) was revealed to be 500,000,000 berries, showing she was already considered more dangerous than most of the members of the Worst Generation while still just a child.
-----
* AbusiveParent: Most of her "crew" are her biological children, but they're just an army to her at best, and "food" at worst. In short, she has no empathy for any of them, except for how useful they are to her.
** She attacked her 16th son, Moscato, yanked out ''forty'' years of his lifespan after he tried calming her down from a food craving-induced rampage, [[DisproportionateRetribution just for getting in her way]]. Even after satisfying her craving, she showed no remorse for her action.
** She deeply loathes her 23rd daughter [[spoiler:Lola]] for ruining a marriage pact that could have made her Pirate King, and wants her murdered. Even those who love Lola have to comply with Big Mom's orders because they'll be punished severely if they don't.
** She also tried forcing [[spoiler:her twin sister Chiffon]] into this same marriage and when that didn't work out, she started beating her black and blue- to the point where she had wounds that took ''years'' to heal- simply because (you guessed it) she looks like [[spoiler:her twin sister]]. She ''still'' attacks her on sight and has basically turned her into an outcast, forcing her to stay with [[spoiler:Bege]] at all times. [[spoiler:Unsurprisingly, this eventually turned Chiffon completely against her mother and most of her siblings who didn't protect her from the abuse]].
** Not even her favorite, Pudding, is safe from this trope [[spoiler:thanks to her ThirdEye, which Big Mom sees as weird and/or just a tool for her to eventually become the Pirate King]].
** Plus, if one of her kids is an asshole? She ''enables'' their bad habits. When her youngest daughter Anana tattles on Streusen because she wants the chef's knives so that she can stab her plush toy with, Big Mom indulges her even when some of her other children ask her not to encourage this behavior, and off-handedly says that everyone has 100 to 200 people they want dead and accept the idea as a fact. [[spoiler:Being raised by someone who enabled ''her'' bad habits might have something to do with this.]]
* AccidentalMurder: [[spoiler:When she was a very young girl, she possessed the strength to kill, but was unaware of it. But when she got older, she gained full awareness of her deadly strength... [[AxCrazy and all hell broke loose.]] She also (likely) ate Mother Carmel and isn't even aware she did so, which is a major part of her FreudianExcuse as she believes Mother Carmel simply abandoned her]].
* AchillesHeel: The portrait of Mother Carmel that Linlin would place in an empty seat directly in front of her during all Tea Parties. If this portrait is damaged in anyway, from either being simply knocked off the table to being shattered into pieces, Linlin would enter a psychological crisis that would leave her fragile, both physically and mentally. So much that simply falling on her knee would leave a bruise and slight bleeding, which is thought impossible due to her iron skin. However, combined with ItOnlyWorksOnce, with the portrait now destroyed for good, [[RemovedAchillesHeel there is now nothing that can set off Big Mom's screaming fits and render her physically fragile]].
* {{Acrofatic}}: She may be hefty, but don't be fooled into thinking she's in any way immobile or incapable of moving around. In fact she's perfectly capable of chasing opponents and even climbing buildings when she's in a rage.
* AdiposeRex: She's the queen of Totto Land and she's [[VillainousGlutton very gluttonous.]]
* AdvancingBossOfDoom: Once she goes into her hunger rage for some wedding cake, the whole 'fight' against her boils down to running for dear life until someone can find a way to calm her down, while all attacks thrown at her barely slow her down.
* AliceAllusion: She seems to be an expy of the Queen of Hearts; her appearance (fat, huge middle-aged lady), personality (extreme selfishness only exceeded by her violent temper and infamous for her DecapitationPresentation) and title (Queen of Totto Land), as well as a symbolic red heart tattoo on her left forearm. Totto Land itself has a very Wonderland-esque feel, with buildings made of edible foodstuffs and many, many AnimateInanimateObject among the populace. Plus, the Straw Hat crew gets a rabbit girl tagalong for the arc.
* AmbiguousDisorder:
** She is said to have some sort of "eating disorder" that causes her to fly into an unstoppable, psychotic rage if she can't have one specific food that she's craving. She becomes incapable of recognizing or listening to anybody and she goes so far as to [[spoiler: murder her own son]] during her rampage. [[spoiler:She has had it ever since she was 5!]] Even worse, she doesn't seem to remember her actions after calming down, being completely unaware of any wrongdoing on her part, as seen with [[spoiler:her not knowing that she killed her own son and, in the backstory, the giant hero Jorl.]]
** Aside from her eating disorder, she's also proven to be both delusional and homicidally insane when she's at her best, and even the brutal [[BloodKnight Vinsmoke Judge]] refers to her as "deranged".
* AmbiguousInnocence:
** As a child, [[spoiler:she displayed a very poor grasp of the world around her. Examples include treating wild predatory animals like children, and nearly mutilating her fellow orphans of other races because she assumed that something was wrong with their non-human bodies]].
** In the present day, there's also some questions regarding exactly how much control she really has over herself when her hunger illness flairs up. Despite the insistence of her crew that she can't recognize her children during her hunger crazes (or anybody else), [[spoiler: she actually ''calls out Pudding and Chiffon by name'' when she sees them during her enraged pursuit of the Straw Hats. Not only that, but she even '''demands''' to know why they're with the Straw Hats.]] So... does she really, ''honestly'' have no control over herself in those moments? It's rather ambiguous at the moment.
* AnArmAndALeg: Invoked by her. As dangerous as it is to be her subordinate, trying to leave her employ is even more so. Prior to Jimbei, nobody who has dared made it to see the next sunrise. Jimbei shows us why that is. Big Mom sees leaving her employ as losing a part of her army, and demands an "equal exchange". To decide that, she brings out a roulette wheel, or dartboard, with crudely-drawn body parts on it. Later reports claim Jimbei backed off, terrified of the "price." It's later made clear by Brulee that it's a sham, and the game is designed to kill whoever plays it. Jimbei's instincts were pretty spot-on. Even then he may have taken the risk, but he also realized the large numbers listed with the various penalties implied that she would also kill/maim a number of his comrades equal to those numbers.
* AndCallHimGeorge: After capturing Brook, she decides to hang on to him like a pet because of how unique he is, instead of just sticking him in her collection like everything else. She cries when she discovers that Brook somehow "died" (the Straw Hats manage to switch him out with a skeletal look-alike), [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny but then she fixates on the possibility of having some delicious wedding cake]].
* AnimalMotifs: Pigs, appropriately enough, as shown in a color spread depicting characters in the Chinese Zodiac. Rather fitting, since she's a rather gluttonous woman.
* AnimateInanimateObject: This is actually a power of hers. She can place pieces of people's souls within any object and bring it to life. The resulting entities are called Homies, and answer to her beck and call, effectively letting her know everything that happens in Totto Land and around it. This includes ''the weather itself''. The most powerful homies are made from her own soul fragments.
* ArchEnemy: Has several.
** Implied to have had one in none other than Gold Roger, the Pirate King himself. Big Mom believes that Roger somehow tricked her, which later gave him the means to reach ahead of her to Raftel, and conquer the Grand Line.
** She's this to the Giants of Elbaf due to [[spoiler:destroying their village and massacring a large number of them as a child during one of her hunger-induced rampages, including one of the eldest warriors when he tried to stop her, which was considered a very undignified and dishonorable death in their race]]. While she tried to smooth things over by marrying [[spoiler:Lola]] to Prince Loki, [[spoiler:Lola's]] decision to run away was likely interpreted as Big Mom not upholding her end, and she consider this yet another reason why she isn't the [[SheIsTheKing Pirate King]] yet.
** After attacking her stronghold, interfering with a political marriage she arranged[[note]]which was a ruse, and going to end in literal bloody murder of the groom's family[[/note]], taking out two of her commanders, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and eating (allegedly) her sweets and the wedding cake]] - if Monkey D. Luffy isn't one at this point, then he's pretty damn close. [[spoiler:Solidified after Luffy hurts her reputation by escaping her territory and his exploits are announced to the world, up to and including declaring the whole thing Luffy's victory.]]
* ArcVillain: Of the Whole Cake Island Arc.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Inverted; she listed the things Luffy did that would've pissed her off (destroying her forest, defeating one of her commanders - who is also her son, and eating her candies) saying [[SkewedPriorities the last one was the worst.]]
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: In RealLife, only a few women are known to have ever given birth to nine kids at once (nonuplets), and in the vast majority of known cases, the babies were stillborn or died shortly after birth. Big Mom, on the other hand, once gave birth to ''ten'' kids at once and all of them are apparently alive and well. And that's not even touching the fact that she's had several ''other'' multiple births- possibly even up to her ''early sixties''- without any ill-effects. Possibly justified though because Big Mom's inhumanly large size likely makes pregnancy and childbirth easy for her... also, this ''is'' the same universe where [[spoiler:Portgas D. Rouge]] managed to prevent herself from giving birth for ''[[LongestPregnancyEver over 20 months after her due date]]'' through nothing but HeroicWillpower; it's obvious that pregnancy falls under the same ItRunsOnNonsensoleum as every other physical feat seen in the series.
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: She basically carved out an entire empire for herself with nothing more than her Devil Fruit powers and the natural, monstrous strength she's had since birth. And despite her [[TheCaligula less than stable leadership]] in the present day, she's so strong that none of her subordinates ''dare'' to challenge her orders.
* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: She's honestly like something out of a horror movie; when she goes on a rampage, there's nothing stopping her until her cravings are satisfied. [[spoiler:This is something she had even as a child]]. Her dream is for her entire family to become as gigantic as she is.
* AwesomenessIsAForce: Possesses Conqueror's Haki. Notable as she's only the second female in the series to possess it (and she's the first to actually ''use'' it, as Hancock was [[InformedAbility only stated]] to have it).
* AxCrazy: Linlin goes from being a pragmatic capitalist who's fairly stable and reasonable, to ruthlessly vengeful, to a psychotic glutton who needs to have a certain food right then and there under threat of death to anyone nearby, all unpredictably and at the drop of a hat. No matter what mood she's in, there is something ''wrong'' with this woman.
* BadassesWearBandanas: She wears a bandanna under her hat, which is normally only seen when she transforms said hat into a sword and removes it in order to use it.
* BadBoss: She ''ate'' one of her subordinates (multiple in the anime) for no real reason. She's also known to attack her subordinates (many of which who ''happen to be her own children'') if they fail her or if she's in one of her hunger-induced rampages. In fact, it wouldn't be wrong to say that she's more liable to attack members of her crew than enemy pirates and marines are -- after all, at least her subordinates don't have to live with those people everyday like they do with her.
* BadPowersBadPeople: She has eaten the Soul-Soul Fruit and routinely takes portions of people's lifespans, scattering those soul fragments on inanimate objects to create an even more [=LSD=] trippy version of ''Alice in Wonderland's'' "Wonderland." She also sometimes uses fragments of her own soul to accomplish this. [[spoiler:While she was merely sweet-hearted and well-intentioned as a child, the horrible, corruptive influence of her parental surrogates turned her into the monster she is now]].
* BaitTheDog: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]]. We always knew that Big Mom was a nasty piece of work, but she initially appeared to have some HiddenDepths and redeeming qualities, such as her promising to honor her deals and her desire to create a utopia for all races. But we find out later she's a ConsummateLiar without the decency to even stick to her promises, and furthermore, her desire to create a utopia [[spoiler:is just an ''extremely'' skewed attempt to mimic Mother Carmel's ideology.]]
* BeautyIsBad: She was [[http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Charlotte_Linlin?file=Charlotte_Linlin_at_Age_28.png a beautiful]], StatuesqueStunner not unlike her daughter Smoothie at age 28, a far cry- a ''really'' far cry- from the physical monstrosity she would grow to be. However, seeing as how she was already cruel and psychotic by her pre-teen years, she was no doubt just as bad during this time as well.
* BerserkButton:
** Do ''not'' get between her and her sweets, ''especially'' if her eating disorder kicks in- if that happens, she becomes an OmnicidalManiac. And the act of '''destroying''' her sweets before she gets the chance to enjoy them is a proven [[TraumaButton trigger]] for her disorder.
** Also, do ''not'' point out that she still doesn't have certain kind of race in her "collection" yet, as shown when Judge asks her about the lack of giants in the island. [[spoiler:This is because of the fiasco in the past that involved Lola running away from a marriage with a giant prince of Elbaf to find a more suitable suitor; Big Mom tried to [[TwinSwitch put Chiffon on her place]] but they eventually found out, angering them and making the giants' relationship to Big Mom ruined. This is also why she asked Caesar to make serums to grow her family's bodies into giant proportions.]]
** Don't ask questions about her picture of Mother Carmel. She knocks a guy unconscious for trying to dig into whatever bad memories it involves. And don't do anything to harm it, because that will plunge her into a psychotic fit.
** Do not betray her, try to leave Totto Land, or both. Doing so is an automatic "Kill" button.
* BigBadDuumvirate: Seems to be set up as one with Vinsmoke Judge for the Totto Land arc, although she is clearly in the higher position of power. [[spoiler: Furthermore, she's playing him for a sap and plans on killing him]].
* BigBadEnsemble: Of the Emperor Saga, along with Kaido.
* BigBrotherIsWatching: Thanks to the Incarnations, fragments of her soul that have taken shape, and the Homies answering to her, she practically has eyes everywhere on the island making it virtually impossible to sneak into her kingdom undetected.
* BigEater: Literally; her appetite is as big as she herself is huge. [[spoiler:This was a source of problems as a child, where one of her first hunger-induced rampages caused her to ''destroy the village of Elbaf''.]]
* BlackWidow: Downplayed. While she isn't shown actually killing any of her husbands unless they "betray" her, at least one of them, Pound (the one stuck in the grounds of Seducing Woods) testifies that after she gets all the children she wants from said husband, she simply casts him out of the household and abandons him to his fate, whatever fate that may be.
* BlessedWithSuck: [[spoiler:She was ''born'' unnaturally strong to the point of being able to kill a full grown giant at age ''five'' and Mother Carmel believed she had the potential to be an ''Admiral or '''Fleet''' Admiral''... and unfortunately for her, no one had any idea how to ''handle'' a child with that much sheer ungodly strength, and she had a genuine mental disorder even at that age. These things combined made being born with such strength more damaging to her life than anything else.]]
* BlueAndOrangeMorality:
** She seems to have fairly bizarre priorities, to say the least -- mostly vast quantities of candy, tea parties and [[BreadEggsMilkSquick kidnapping men to marry her daughters]]. At the very least, that last one [[ItMakesSenseInContext makes better sense in context]].[[note]] Sanji -- the one being kidnapped for marriage -- belongs to the Vinsmoke family, who command a vast, technologically advanced army that Big Mom wants access to.[[/note]]
** She lets her kids have tons of power and status in her country, and in general, she seems to have them living in good conditions; however, if she's hungry, she won't hesitate to ''kill'' one of her own children if they get in her way. Worse still, even when she's fully conscious of her actions, she'll still go so far as to kill them herself if they [[YouHaveFailedMe fail her]].
** Given her clear and obvious insanity, it's sincerely unclear exactly ''how'' Big Mom sees the world, only that it severely twisted and warped.
* {{Bokukko}}: Uses "ore" to refer to herself in the original Japanese.
* BondVillainStupidity: She ''could'' have easily executed [[spoiler:the Vinsmoke Family in their sleep on their first night in Tottoland, but instead, she deliberately shuns that option because she wants to kill them all at a huge, overindulgent party so everybody can dance on their bodies and eat cake (literally).]] This, of course, gives the Straw Hats and their allies time to figure out her plans and come up with a counterattack. She also does this to Luffy, Nami, and Brook, keeping them imprisoned/captured and toying with them rather than executing them immediately. So, naturally, they escape. This is justified as she a habit of engraving the folly of going up against her into her enemies before she kills them, as well as to make an example out of them, but it backfired hard in the Straw Hats' case.
* BornWinner: Big Mom's freakish size, strength and durability don't stem from [[TrainingFromHell trai]][[CharlesAtlasSuperpower ning]] of any sort; she's been like that since she was a 5-year old child. She was simply born a freak of nature, powerful enough to become one of the four strongest pirates in the world without any need for training.
* TheCaligula: Ruler of Totto Land and clearly not anything remotely resembling sane. PlayedForDrama, as even her genuinely good intentions are twisted by her insanity, as shown in her flashback in Ch. 868 where she pretty much coerced people to be a part of her "promised land" or else.
* CannibalismSuperpower: It wasn't on purpose, and she had no idea about how it happened, but she gained her Devil Fruit power [[spoiler:by accidentally eating Mother Carmel, who had the power at the time]].
* CatchPhrase: "Life or [insert what she wants here]!?"
* TheCollector: Along with being obsessed with creating a country for all races, Linlin's also very interested in the strangest and most unique creatures, and her daughter Brûlée points Chopper out as a likely candidate for her menagerie. Chapter 847 shows a part of said collection in the palace's library, courtesy of the powers of her son Mont-d'Or. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for her, Jimbei sets her entire library on fire while freeing Nami and Luffy, putting years of collecting down the drain]].
* ComedicSociopathy: Her looking at another sentient being hungrily would not be funny at all. [[spoiler: Except when she temporarily reformed and her hunger was PlayedForLaugh.]]
* ConsummateLiar: [[spoiler:Her promise of sparing Sanji's friends, as well as her proposed alliance with the Germa 66,]] is revealed to be a sham that she plays under her sweet words. [[spoiler:Pudding also works the same way to Sanji personally, though due to Sanji's "interference" she couldn't go through with her plan.]]
* ControlFreak: A trait she shares with Judge Vinsmoke. All she cares is that she gets ''her'' way and her family is there to cater to her whims as she sees fit. So if she says they're gonna marry someone, then their opinion is invalid and they'll do so without question. If they refuse, then it doesn't matter if they're her blood, she won't hesitate to have them killed on the spot. [[spoiler:Lola is one such example as she ran out on a marriage that would've supposedly put her closer to becoming the Pirate King.]]
* CrazyPrepared: In regards to one of her goals which she needs Caesar Clown for, she's so excited to see results that [[spoiler:she created an exact replica of Caesar's laboratory from Punk Hazard on Whole Cake Island, complete with the same equipment, in case the original was destroyed]].
* CreepyChild: [[spoiler:A tragic case, as 5 year old Linlin was just too big and too strong for her own good; she would severely injure the other kids in her orphanage and even ''kill'' wild animals without any understanding of what she had done. She also developed her eating disorder at this age, going on a blind, murderous rampage when asked to fast for an Elbaf tradition. And due to her naivety, she ended up corrupted by people who wanted something out of her, resulting in her becoming a true CreepyChild that just got worse as she grew up]].
* {{Cumulonemesis}}: One of her minions is a cloud Homie named Zeus. It looks quite goofy at first but make no mistake: its lighting attacks deal a world of hurt.
* CurbStompBattle: [[spoiler:Vinsmoke Judge, for lack of a better term, got ''fucked up'' when he tried to square off against her, and the rest of the Alliance didn't fare much better.]]
* DarkActionGirl: The only female among the Four Emperors, by extension making her the most powerful female pirate in the world, and an extremely violent and psychotic woman. Especially when rampaging due to her eating disorder, during which she becomes a nigh-unstoppable force. Although she usually uses her Devil Fruit powers to rip out souls or have her Homies fight for her she has monstrous strength and haki, able to unleash destructive shockwaves just by swinging her sword.
* DiabolusExMachina: During the Dressrosa arc, half of the Straw Hats are infiltrating the castle, while the rest are on the ship with a captive Caesar Clown to use against Doflamingo if necessary. Cue Big Mom's ship showing up ''right out of nowhere'', its crew intent on capturing Caesar because [[TooDumbToLive he swindled research funds from them]]. This forces the Straw Hats on the ship to flee to the next island with Big Mom hot on their tail, leaving the Straw Hats still on Dressrosa with no backup plan.
* DisproportionateRetribution:
** She's infamous for decimating ''entire islands'' just for not providing enough candy for her. She considers this a perfectly reasonable reaction to someone who failed to hold up their end of a bargain. The only reason why Fishman Island didn't have this fate was Luffy claiming it as his territory to make up for eating the candy tribute left for Big Mom.
** According to her subordinates, she'll also decapitate a loved one of Sanji's and send their head to him in a box if he were to decline his wedding invitation. And indeed we see a poor soul, Jigra, who couldn't attend a previous tea party due to having to bury his mother, despite the fact he sent her a letter explaining this. Does she at least make an exception for this reason? [[RejectedApology Nope]], Big Mom has his ''father'' killed for being unable to come and sends Jigra his head in a box. And when he tries to get revenge, he doesn't even get to see Big Mom in the flesh before one of the Sweet Commanders finishes extinguishing their family tree by coldly capping Jigra [[KilledMidSentence mid-sentence.]]
* DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: [[spoiler:A huge problem for her when she was a child. She was already extremely powerful [[SuperStrongChild even as a five-year old]], and she often caused a lot of destruction by accident, to the point her parents had to grudgingly abandon her with the giants and Mother Carmel on Elbaf. When your child can [[AccidentalMurder kill things by accident]] to the point entire countries want nothing to do with her, there's not much else one can do except send them somewhere they can't cause harm.]]
* DoNotTauntCthulhu: Whenever someone enters her island, she makes it a point to thoroughly defeat them without them even getting close to reaching her, so they realize the foolishness of messing with her. If she doesn't have her subordinates kill them, she kicks them out of her island humiliated.
* DontWakeTheSleeper: The Straw Hats have to save Brook from her clutches while she was asleep. Thing is, anything that just lightly wakes her up will get thoroughly beaten down by her and her homies. Fortunately they managed it after a few attempts, by switching Brook with a skeleton they found and given some "hair" made of seaweed.
* DramaticIrony: [[spoiler:Her ambitions to unite the world were based off the teachings of Mother Carmel. While Big Mom's ideas on it were honest, she's also completely unaware that Carmel's teachings were a sham and that she was slave trader who sold the orphans she took in to the government.]]
* TheDreaded: Naturally, considering that she's one of the Four Emperors. Every character so far has been shown to be flat-out terrified of her. For good reason as she would even kill her own son if he got in her way. It's even exploited: it's the fear of her opponents towards her that makes her soul-taking power work. [[spoiler:The giants won't even speak her name anymore due to the atrocities she inflicted upon them.]]
* EarlyInstallmentCharacterDesignDifference: In her shadowed debut, she looked like a {{Cephalothorax}} with a head twice the size of her body and she also had completely pink, bloodshot eyes. In her first ''proper'' appearance, she's still an extremely fat {{Gonk}} but at least appears to have normal eyes, functioning limbs, and a more proportionately sized head and torso.
* EdibleThemeNaming: The charlotte is a French cake, and she also named most of her children after other food items (Pudding, Praline, Moscato, Chiffon, Smoothie, Nusstorte...).
* EnemyWithout: Inverted. Prometheus Zeus and Napoleon may be made from fragments of her own soul, but they also act as TheConscience. When she's in one of her hunger rampages, they actually pleaded for her to stop the carnage.
* EnfantTerrible: As a child, [[spoiler:she was kind and innocent enough, but accidentally caused a lot of destruction because of her strength, and Mother Carmel's overly forgiving habit didn't help matters. She also saw the Long-arm and Merfolk as weird and wanted to take their "weird part" out of them, though she grew out of it thanks to Mother Carmel's influence. Then, when she tried to fast for a few days, her hunger (and specifically the lack of Semla, her new favorite food), caused her to go on a destructive rampage due to her eating disorder. This comes to a head when she [[ImAHumanitarian accidentally and unknowingly eats]] Mother Carmel and her fellow orphans and turns to piracy, gaining a bounty of half a billion (equal to Luffy's at the time of the story) before she hits her teens.]]
* EqualOpportunityEvil: Big Mom takes a lot of pride in the fact that Totto Land is home to people from ''all'' species. She became pretty angry when Vinsmoke Judge mentioned that wasn't true, since the island has no giants. [[spoiler:As it turns out, this is her completely genuine attempt to copy her maternal figure Mother Carmel, just twisted by her insanity.]]
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** It was implied she's not exactly the nicest person around before her proper introduction. What do we see of her in the chapter when she's actually introduced? She's an utterly massive behemoth, eats her henchmen, and casually has countries torched over not getting her candy.
** She gets another one when she appears un-obscured for the first time, which features her happily singing with her {{Animate Inanimate Object}}s about a ''sacrifice'' at her "hellish Tea Party" and hoping to eat jelly made of ''human blood'', which further establishes her as not only evil and petty, but also completely insane.
** And then a third one right afterwards when she's gone ''[[UnstoppableRage completely psycho]]'' over the lack of a croquembouche and presently decimating the daylights out of '''her own country''', right down to ''injured one of her own sons for getting in her way.'' This is where we met the side of her that a giant would refer to as a '''demon.'''
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Mother Carmel clearly means ''something'' to her, as [[spoiler:her picture being damaged will send her into a VillainousBSOD to the point she's rendered vulnerable. It's eventually revealed that Carmel was the only person who was ever genuinely nice to her and treated her well. This is made horribly tragic as it's eventually revealed that Carmel was a slave trader who actually didn't give a shit about her. Big Mom also got along quite well with her fellow orphans despite wanting to "fix" their "weird parts", and was equally devastated when she saw they too, mysteriously vanished]]. Sadly, the same can't be said about her biological children, who are powerful tools for her at best.
* EvilLaugh: "Hahaha-mamamama."
* EvilMatriarch: Despite her horrifying physical appearance, she has 39 daughters, one of which is to be married to Sanji as part of a political alliance with the Vinsmoke family, and 46 sons, each of which she marries off in order to extend her power. This doesn't stop her from ''attacking and injuring one of her own children on a whim'' during a hunger-motivated, psychotic episode. So, yeah, she's not winning any mother of the year awards.
** She actively ''encourages'' her young children to be violent and psychotic- even against their own siblings- and Opera flat out notes that she'll consciously kill him herself if she finds out that he failed to stop Jimbei.
* EvilOverlord: She is a pirate emperor that often exerts her authority and influence to satisfy her indulgences. For example, she can make demands beyond candy, like invitations, and if they aren't met, she can find out everything about this person, including their friends or family, and have their heads delivered in a box, to the offender. When Whitebeard died, she was the one who claimed his territory in Fishman Island, and while her name protects Fishman Island in a way similar to Whitebeard's, she demands tribute (in form of tons of sweets) for the favor.
* TheEvilsOfFreeWill: Played with. As long as it doesn't interfere with her own desires as a pirate, Big Mom respects the choices of others and will listen to their pleas within reason. [[spoiler: This is revealed to be played straight as Big Mom is revealed to only give the Illusion of choice to people at best.]]
** Played straight with the choice of who her children get to marry. As the marriage of her children serve only to strengthen her pirate crew.
** When asked by Jimbei to leave her crew, she fully respected his freedom of choice as a pirate and did not care for his reasons. However noting the loss to her crew, she demanded Jimbei lose something of value as well. [[spoiler:This turned out to be a lie, as Jimbei and other characters reveal the Wheel is a sham and the point is simply to kill everyone who plays the game as leaving is not tolerated.]]
** In Big Mom's nation Totto Land, Big Mom isn't opposed to the free will of her citizens. All the citizens have the choice of "Life or Leave". In exchange for a small portion of life span, anyone can live in Totto Land or they have to leave. [[spoiler:This also turned out to be a lie, other characters reveal that it is merely an illusion of choice and no one is actually allowed to leave. Those who choose to are killed.]]
** Big Mom approved of Sanji's request for the Straw Hats to leave the island alive. As long as Sanji is agreeing to the marriage she has no problem letting a few things slide. [[spoiler:This as well turned out to be a lie, as she plans to kill Sanji at his wedding and the Straw Hats afterwards.]]
* ExplosiveBreeder: She has 85 children: 39 daughters and 46 sons. Being only 68 years old, she managed this by having ''lots'' (twenty-one, to be exact, totaling sixty-three children) of multi-births, with her record being ''ten kids'' at once (all of whom are currently 18, meaning that she had them at ''50 years old'' and continued having kids past that age), and the rest being one set of quintuplets, two sets of quadruplets, six sets of triplets and eleven sets of twins. Plus twenty-two single births. Brook lampshaded how it's no wonder her epithet is Big Mom.
* ExpressiveAccessory: Her pirate hat, which contains a jolly roger that mimics Linlin's facial expressions and even talks to her. Justified in that Big Mom has the power to transfer souls to objects, and Napoleon the Bicorne is one of her most powerful familiars.
* {{Familiar}}: Her Devil Fruit allows her to create these by planting pieces of her soul or other's into inanimate objects to make them loyal minions called Homies. This basically lets her have eyes everywhere on her island at once. In particular, she mentions that if she uses her own soul to create them, they'll be stronger than other Homies. So far there are only three of them: Prometheus the Sun, Zeus the Cloud and Napoleon, her hat. She treasures the three more than her other homies.
* FamilyValuesVillain: Interestingly, one of Big Mom's dreams involves her forming a huge family with pretty much every race on the world included. She also wants to make all her family members as gigantic as she is, but for the sole purpose of being able to dine with them at the same eye level. There's also the fact that she treats marriages as SeriousBusiness. Of course, this doesn't stop her from crushing pretty much anyone that gets in the way of her dream.
* FantasticRacism: Defied; she specifically set out to make her country a place where all races can live in harmony, contrasting with the prejudice we see elsewhere in the world... and then again, subverted. It's treated as a figment of her childlike personality, and is colored by her psychopathic inability to see people as anything but pawns to get her what she wants. She treats the other races almost as if they're exotic pets. Case in point, when she discovers the totally-unique Brook, she subjects him to AndCallHimGeorge.
* FatalFlaw: Gluttony, big time. Her "hunger-induced rampage" has destroyed countless cities (and narrowly endangered her own) and potentially killed people, [[spoiler:including a giant, from when she was 5. That was also why she got left on Elbaf by her parents AND later exiled from the same island.]]
* FatBastard: She's extremely portly and extremely cruel.
* FingerInTheMail: Pekoms noted that if you refuse one of her [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse offers,]] expect to get a parcel within a few days. Inside will be the head of someone previously involved with you, and these include (for Sanji) those from a certain restaurant in East Blue, or even the Kamabakka Kingdom.
-->'''Luffy:''' [[ParanoiaFuel How the hell do you guys even know about all that?!]]\\
'''Pekoms:''' This... is what is called power, Straw Hat.
* FluffyTheTerrible: Charlotte Linlin is a rather cutesy name for one of the four toughest and deadliest pirates in the world.
* {{Foil}}:
** To Vinsmoke Judge:
*** Big Mom is a powerful Devil Fruit user and immensely strong, to the point where she could just stomp on anyone annoying her. Judge is a normal man whose only weapons are his family's advanced technology, his genetically-modified children, and clone armies.
*** Big Mom has almost a hundred children, some of them with identical or fraternal siblings. Judge's family of five children, with only one set of male quadruplets, is vastly smaller.
*** Big Mom is a horrible parent who doesn't give a crap about her children, and either enables their bad habits [[spoiler:much like hers were enabled by others as a child]], dotes on them because they're useful, or viciously attacks them if they fail her and ''especially'' during a hunger rampage if they get in her way. In comparison, Judge appears to be a loving father for his kids, but only if they're strong and follow his values. [[spoiler:Moreover, he experimented on his then-unborn quadruplet sons by removing their empathy to make sure they become the ideal warriors, and only dotes on them because they're "successful", unlike Sanji who was abused and cast out for remaining human thanks to his mother's sacrifice]].
*** Big Mom's territory, Totto Land, is a vast and prosperous archipelago of food-based islands, with its inhabitants living in luxury. The Germa Kingdom is smaller, extremely militaristic, and its subjects are either cannon fodder or punching bags to show off the Vinsmokes' cruelty.
*** Big Mom ''loves'' food, and many of her children are chefs with some area of expertise. Judge has a very low opinion of chefs and believes that members of royalty shouldn't serve others... which makes it an {{Irony}} that he even came up with the idea to ally Germa with the Big Mom Pirates in the first place.
*** The large majority of Big Mom's children are Devil Fruit powerhouses, just like her. Judge's children got their powers from science [[spoiler:and have varying of psychological alterations; Reiju can't completely disobey her father, while Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji have extreme EmotionSuppression since utero]].
** To Capone Bege:
*** Bege wears nice, dark suits and smokes cigars to portray a threatening image of a mafia don, and even acts the part. However, he loves his family, and cares for his crew (even if he won't always admit it). Big Mom's clothes are obnoxiously colorful and carries a pretense of reasonable diplomacy... but behind closed doors she's completely nuts, with a destructive, homicidal temper.
*** Their Devil Fruits also contrast - Bege's Castle-Castle Fruit "gives" people a place to rest, hide, and eat (provided the guests don't piss him off with JabbaTableManners). Big Mom's Soul-Soul Fruit "takes" away the souls of people, which she uses to give random inanimate objects their sentience.
*** Bege is a caring father and husband, who loves Chiffon despite her {{Gonk}}iness, and has been grooming his only child, Pez, into becoming the next don. Big Mom is a horrible parent and spouse, with many discarded husbands and her many children fearing her; [[spoiler:two of them were attacked and severely injured for getting in her way (Opera, Moscato), while four of them "betrayed" her in some fashion (Chiffon, Lola, Praline, Pudding)]].
*** Their own CharacterDevelopment went in opposite directions; Bege started off as ruthless, bloodthirsty, and unreasonably harsh, but marrying Chiffon and having a son after the TimeSkip softened him, to where he admits he cares for his crew and will protect them, come hell or high water [[spoiler:such as blasting Oven for kidnapping Chiffon]]. Big Mom's monstrous, hedonistic, and fickle personality was the result of [[spoiler:having trusted parental figures see her as some kind of meal ticket and enable her worst traits while not even bothering to properly discipline her, resulting in the sweet but mentally ill Linlin developing very twisted morals]]. Having a lot of husbands and a lot of children didn't improve her situation; it just got worse, and created a very large DysfunctionalFamily.
** To Whitebeard:
*** Whitebeard was considered the strongest of the original emperors, inducting men into his crew by adopting them as his sons. He is the first known pirate to claim Fishman Island as his territory. Big Mom struggled to compete with the other emperors by arranging marriages to pump out children to serve as her army. She only laid claim to Fishman Island after Whitebeard had died.
*** Whitebeard and his crew aren't biologically related, but consider themselves a family and would lay down their lives for each other. Big Mom's crew is itself a heavily dysfunctional biological family, with half-brothers and half-sisters that have little love for each other, and fear Big Mom more than they love her.
*** Whitebeard's Devil Fruit gives him the physical might of an earthquake, which he only uses in combat. Big Mom's Devil Fruit gives her the power to manipulate souls, and she uses this to her advantage for the ruling of her domain.
*** Whitebeard's physique stayed incredible even as his health appeared to deteriorate with his age. After her physique improved when she reached adulthood, Big Mom seems to have let herself go as she approached her golden years while she appears to be in good health, chronic eating frenzies notwithstanding.
* FormerlyFit: She was much more slender (and beautiful) at age 28 and was visibly buff at 48, a far cry from her current obesity. Although, this is [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in a way because she's actually {{Acrofatic}} and is not even close to being out of shape in the present day; in fact, her stamina is as superhuman as you'd expect from an Emperor. And then we see what happens when she goes without eating for eight hours [[spoiler: and she slims back down to a more limber figure, somewhere in between her former pretty appearance and her witch-like looks today. Kinda like how Wapol (also a BigEater) can slim himself and how Alvida shed her fat.]]
* ForWantOfANail: Want to know what Linlin would be with better parental figures than Carmel and Streusen? [[spoiler: Post-Amnesia Linlin, when exposed to the kindness of O-Tsuru, became a ''gentle'', ''grateful'' and ''helpful'' person. The exact opposite of her current self.]]
* FreakyIsCool: Considers herself a collector of the unique and strange, intent on creating a utopia consisting of every creature in the world. [[spoiler:Ironically, and tragically, this somehow doesn't apply to her daughter Pudding, as she told her in no uncertain terms, that Pudding's ThirdEye made her look hideous]].
* FreudianExcuse:
** [[spoiler:She has abandonment issues stemming from the sudden disappearance of Mother Carmel and the other orphans she grew up with, which explains why when someone joins her crew, they marry into her family, and if they want to leave her crew they have to spin the wheel and essentially die. She doesn't want anyone to ever leave her again... by any means necessary. She also lived among the giants as a child, until she unknowingly caused herself to be banished due to her eating disorder, which (along with her idea from Carmel that people should see "eye to eye") is both why she's so intent on getting Caesar's growth formula for her crew, and puts her treatment of Lola for ruining her alliance with them in a whole new light.]]
** [[spoiler:Her only parental figure after Mother Carmel's 'disappearance' was Streusen, her future chef, who not only found her apparently ''eating'' Mother Carmel alive funny, but actively encouraged her worst habits from age six onward. This not only goes a long way to explaining how she ended up as twisted as she is and how she went from causing pain without meaning to to [[{{Sadist}} actively enjoying it]], but why she more or less raises her children the exact same way]].
** Her having a large family of hybrid children came from [[spoiler:growing up with fellow orphans who came from all walks of life, only to unknowingly and accidentally devour them on her 6th birthday. Her having so much children is presumably an attempt to make up for the loss]].
* GiantWallOfWateryDoom: [[spoiler: In chapter 880, she uses her powers to control Perospero's candy on the water, creating a ''massive'' tsunami to drop on top of the Thousand Sunny- a threat so monumental that it was enough for [[FieryRedhead Nami]] to uncharacteristically [[DissonantSerenity calmly apologize]] to Luffy for what appeared to be her imminent death]].
* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Pekoms notes that her base of operations pretty much became a massive and powerful nation over time, and even her proper introduction refers to her as the ''Queen'' of Totto Land. And when she asks her subjects for something, they have to, or...
-->'''Linlin:''' LIFE OR TREAT...
* {{Gonk}}: She's an extremely overweight woman with a downright revolting face.
* GoryDiscretionShot: [[spoiler:Since her ''eating Carmel and the children'' was too graphic to be shown on-panel, it was shown off-panel instead and never mentioned directly. We instead see screams and crying from the distance, a horrified eyewitness account, and the fact that Big Mom suddenly gained Carmel's powers mere days after her disappearance]].
* HairTriggerTemper: She seems frighteningly easy to piss off, considering that she'll decimate entire islands if they don't give enough candy to her.
* HeavySleeper: She somehow manages to sleep through several people breaking into her chamber and making loud noises, and even her own weather manipulating homies creating mini ''lightning and fire storms'' doesn't disturb her sleep. However, funnily enough, she manages to hear a fly buzzing and drowsily [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill smashes it into oblivion]].
* HeelFaceBrainwashing: A non-magical version of"brainwashing".[[spoiler:After Big Mom suffered brain damage, Chopper and Tsuru treated her with kindness and share whatever little food they had with her. This was enough to turn her back to the sweet innocent child she once was. Later Chopper tricked her to invade the Prison mine Udon to rescue Luffy. ]]
* HiddenDepths:
** Subverted: she seems to value the idea that pirates live with freedom in mind, not questioning Jimbei's reasons to leave her crew and honoring Sanji's request to allow the Straw Hats to live, as he is sacrificing his pirate life with them to be a part of her crew. [[spoiler:Then it turns out it's all a sham; she had no intention of letting Jimbei go, and fully intended to kill the Straw Hats after the wedding. She only ever gives the illusion of choice; pick the wrong thing, and you die.]]
** [[spoiler:Her past life flashbacks reveal more: She used to have somebody she loved dearly, Mother Carmel, before she mysteriously went missing. She was abandoned in Island of Elbaf by her parents. Her idea of an utopian land where every race of the world can live in peace was Mother Carmel's idea, although Big Mom thoroughly twisted it]].
** She also has a desire of making everyone be as big as her so that everyone including her can see each other eye-to-eye, although she seemed to take it more literally than others. [[spoiler:This came from a literal interpretation of Streusen filling her with dreams of creating a country where everyone saw eye-to-eye]]
* HollywoodAcid: Her spit/churned-up stomach acid literally smokes and dissolves the ground it falls on.
* HopelessBossFight: Every time she actually gets into a fight, it's this. Whenever the Straw Hats and their allies fight her directly, it's more to stall her than anything else, since that's the best they can really hope for.
* HorrorHunger: As mentioned, she's devoured her henchmen. But it gets '''far''' worse when her cravings for random sweets kick in. If that happens, give her what she wants, or ''don't stand in her way.'' [[spoiler:And when she does get what she craves, ''do not stand close to her, or the food while she's eating, or there's a chance she'll devour you too!'']]
* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: During her lifetime Big Mom had husbands of different races, including a dwarf, with whom she had Normande. Dwarves are small enough to stand on the palm of a hand, while Big Mom is a colossal woman... [[BrainBleach it's better not go into further explanations]].
* HumiliationConga: Her Tea Party went ''way'' off the rails. [[spoiler:It began when her own children failed to off Sanji, followed by the wedding cake getting obliterated by the many Luffy clones that were hiding inside, sending her into a hunger rampage while in full view of her guests, which included some of the most powerful Media heads like "Big News" Morgan. Then Jimbei defied her in full view of her guests, and to her shock, he is immune to her powers as he fully believes in Luffy to the point of not fearing death itself. Then Brook managed to sneak in and smashed her most cherished possession, sending her off to a VillainousBreakdown, which was the cue for Bege's assassination attempt. But things went bad for the rebels for a while, her coming back to her senses and about to deliver a curb stomp to them... only for the Tamatebako bomb to suddenly off and send Whole Cake Chateau crashing down to the island. She survived, but all in all, she ended up being humiliated in front of her guests, her children having to protect her despite her considering them as lowly, her entire massive home being obliterated, and her not getting the wedding cake she's been looking forward to. By the time the arc ends, her home is in ruins, two of her strongest children and subordinates were defeated in combat, the people she ''desperately'' wanted dead all escaped, Zeus [[HeelFaceTurn betrayed her entirely]] for Nami, depriving her of one of her three strongest weapons and the news generally considers that Luffy was the "victor" of the entire mess, getting him promoted to the '''Fifth''' Emperor in the global scene, while making her and her crew look vulnerable for the first time in decades]]. Safe to say, she's left absolutely, wholly enraged by the entire situation.
* {{Hypocrite}}: She claims to want a family containing all the races of the world, and has engaged in InterspeciesRomance herself, but she derides her daughter by a Three-Eyed Tribesman as a freak for having inherited her father's third eye. To say nothing of the hypocrisy of ''Big Mom'' of all people, a {{mutant}} with unnatural stature, durability and strength that has no biological rationale we've seen so far, calling '''anybody''' a "freak".
* IHaveNoSon:
** [[spoiler:Lola may be one of her daughters, but Big Mom despises her to the point of ''wanting to send assassins after her''. This is because Lola ran away, ruining an especially important ArrangedMarriage (with a prince of Elbaf) that would have granted Big Mom enough power to become the Pirate King (or Queen, in this case). Note that this hatred is very much one-sided, as Lola herself still considers Big Mom family.]]
** [[spoiler:She also effectively disowned Lola's twin sister Chiffon for looking too much like Lola, beating her so viciously that she basically forced her to hide out on the outskirts of the country just to get out of her sight]].
** [[spoiler:And just to round it all out, Big Mom rejected Lola and Chiffon's father, Pound, as a husband, calling open season on him at the hands of the rest of the family.]]
* ImAHumanitarian: In her debut, she ate one of her subordinates anticipating sweets from Fishman Island. [[spoiler: It's also all but stated that she accidentally '''ate''' Mother Carmel and the other orphans on her 6th birthday. The last time Big Mom ever saw them, she was eating her birthday cake and disappearing into gluttonous bliss... when she came to, she turns out to have ''devoured most of the table the cake was on'' and, furthermore, there was nothing around her but small fragments of the table and scraps of clothes... including Carmel's nun robes. When it was reported to the giants thanks to a witness, Linlin's name instantly became even more hated among them than it was before. And scariest of all, devouring Mother Carmel had the unexpected side effect of ''assimilating her Devil Fruit powers.'' With those abilities, she easily became an Emperor.]]
* ImpossiblyDeliciousFood: [[spoiler:Luffy preventing her from eating the wedding cake at the Tea Party causes this to be her craving when her eating disorder kicks in. Since she's never tasted the cake, the food she's craving is a cake filled with all the fantasies of what it possibly could have tasted like -- a cake that is literally impossible to make for anyone short of the greatest chef in the world. Even with the aid of Pudding and Chiffon, the two people who specialized in what the cake supposed was to be (chocolate chiffon cake), the task still would have been impossible. Luckily for the Big Mom Pirates, Sanji, who ''is'' the greatest chef in the world (or at least close to it), was still present within their territory and fully capable of not only recreating the intended cake, but also making it taste even ''better''. ''Unfortunately'' for them, they had just tried to assassinate him and his family -- Sanji only got involved in the baking process because Big Mom rampaging would make the Straw Hats' escape even more difficult, especially after Perospero lied to Big Mom and claimed they had stolen the cake. When she finally gets a taste of it, she's so overwhelmed by how delicious it is that she blissfully states it's "so delicious that I could die!"]].
* ImprobableAge: The fact that Big Mom continued to have children well into her twilight years is insane, especially when accounting for her youngest children like Anglaise, Anana, and the twins Dolce and Dragée; she looks old enough to be their ''grandmother''.
* InsaneEqualsViolent: Big Mom is undoubtedly ''insane'' and mentally disturbed, and very violent. [[spoiler:PlayedForDrama, as it's shown her more malevolent tendencies are the result of how various people reacted to her mental issues, instead of actually trying to help her. At first any damage she caused was because she genuinely didn't know any better]].
* InterspeciesRomance: At least nine of her husbands were non-humans - a merman (who sired Prim and Praline), a fish-man (who sired De-Chat), three different Snakenecks (one fathering the quadruplets Mondée, Amande, Hachée and Effilée, one fathering the twins Mascarpone and Joscarpone, and one fathering Wiro), a Longarm (who fathered Mobile, Marble, Myukuru and Maple), a Longleg (who fathered Smoothie, Citron and Cinnamon), a Three-Eye (who fathered Pudding) and a Dwarf (who fathered Normande). Seeing as how she's ''obsessed'' with creating a nation of rare species, it's likely she [[ReallyGetsAround specifically seeks out men of these varied races]].
* InTheBlood: Played straight and averted at the same time.
** Despite the incredibly dysfunction surrounding the Charlotte family, most of Big Mom's children shown to date still ended up becoming decent and kind people, and even though they've been shipped off for ArrangedMarriage, they are all HappilyMarried and love their spouses more than life itself. Praline (29th) even goes so far as to state that she'd back her husband, Aladdin of the restored Sun Pirates, over her Mama. Moscato (16th) tried to stop Big Mom during her rampage before she either killed someone or destroyed the city. She ended up severely injuring him.
** Seems to be played straight with some of her other children like Perospero (1st), Brûlée (8th), Cracker (10th), and Anana (39th). This leaves Lola, Chiffon, Praline, and Pudding ([[spoiler:though not without some ''serious'' CharacterDevelopment and VillainousBreakdown first in Pudding's case]]) as her only benevolent children thus far.
* IntimidatingRevenueService: The fee to live in Totto Land under her protection is rather steep. In addition to the tithes of candy she demands, citizens must donate one month of their lifespan every six months (collected by Big Mom via her Devil Fruit power and used to create her "homies") or else they must leave.[[note]]For example, the average life expectancy of a normal human is seventy-eight years old. Apply Big Mom's fee, and that expectancy decreases to sixty-five years old -- ''thirteen years''.[[/note]]
* InvincibleVillain: Possesses immense physical strength and durability; absolutely nothing can normally even scratch her skin and she can shatter rock with a half-conscious slap. Just to show how strong Big Mom is, she blocks Luffy's Gear Four King Kong Gun with one arm almost casually, and this is an attack that once cracked a city in half. Most of the Whole Cake Island arc consists of the Straw Hats and their allies simply trying to ''get away from her'' because they know fighting her directly would be suicide. By the end of arc, [[spoiler:Big Mom hasn't suffered any injury whatsoever (aside from an incredibly wounded pride perhaps), while the Straw Hats barely manage to escape by the skin of their teeth with heavy casualties, which is still counted as an incredible achievement.]]
* {{Irony}}:
** [[spoiler:Her mother figure Carmel was a liar and a nasty piece of work not unlike Big Mom herself... ''but'', due to Carmel trying to pass herself off as a loving mother, it appears that she didn't actually raise Linlin with any twisted values; Big Mom just so happened to end up evil ''anyway'' after Carmel disappeared]].
** She is a [[ItsAllAboutMe major]] ControlFreak and [[BadBoss is really cruel]] [[ImAHumanitarian in how she does it]], and [[StartOfDarkness yet she became evil]] [[spoiler:because of events that she wasn't in control for, moreover she is also an UnwittingPawn herself.]]
* ItsAllAboutMe:
** Big Mom decides who her children will marry for the purposes of strengthening her pirate crew; her children have no choice in the matter. Big Mom also goes on rampages to satisfy her sweet tooth and will not stop until she consumes the sweet of her desire, to the point she has her crew murder inhabitants on different islands to collect ingredients. This leads to her extreme grudge towards Luffy who ate her sweets on Fishman Island. It's played rather realistically, however, in that once her needs are satisfied, she'll show care towards her children. So long as they play by her rules, they'll be happy, as she puts it herself.
** The actual wedding ceremonies of her kids are designed to cater entirely to her as well. Apparently, it's customary for the guests of Big Mom's tea party in general to bring ''her'' presents for the occasion. One guest even mentions as a side comment that, in a pile of presents and treasures brought for Big Mom, there's "some in there for Pudding because of her wedding, too" -- as if it were normal that bringing presents for the bride should be of secondary importance to appeasing her mother.
** Big Mom takes this trope, [[UpToEleven turns it up to eleven, and breaks the knob trying to turn it up further.]] If you look at everything she does and everyone she keeps around her, there is nothing she keeps or cares for unless it brings her pleasure or some manner of service. Anything that doesn't serve her in some capacity, she destroys or kills. If her children can't provide her with protection or bring her new power through their marriages, she ignores or worse, abuses them. If anyone tries to leave her crew, they are set-up to be killed. Her random cravings do not end unless she's given what she desires. In the grand scheme of things, everything and everyone in Totto Land is more or less designed to serve Big Mom, and everyone else is secondary.
* ItsPersonal: Given how petty of a woman she is, it should come as no surprise that she's gained particular vendettas against no less than '''five''' of the Straw Hat Pirates. To wit:
** Luffy: He went out of his way to challenge her, and then straight up told her that she wouldn't become the Pirate King. Above all of that, she witnesses him lead the charge to ruin her tea party. To say that she despises Monkey D. Luffy is an understatement.
** Nami: When Big Mom figures out that Nami has a friendship with her much hated daughter Lola, she decides to make the navigator's life a living hell. It probably doesn't help that Nami talks back to her to protect Lola, either.
** Sanji: As a Vinsmoke and as someone who directly took part in ruining her tea party [[spoiler:including freeing his family from execution, however deserved it was]], Sanji's not very high on Big Mom list.
** Brook: He actively challenged her to a fight, insulted her pride by referring to her as a "young lady," actually damaged Prometheus and Zeus, and, most importantly, destroyed the picture of Mother Carmel. And she's not even aware that he also managed to slip copies of her poneglyphs out of her treasure room right under her nose yet.
** Jimbei: He betrayed her crew and declared his allegiance to Luffy in front of a crowded party, further wounding her pride when her attempts to kill him on the spot for the action failed.
* IWasQuiteALooker: You have to see it to believe it ([[https://i.redd.it/akozqdb3ihdz.jpg here you go!]]), but SBS 86 reveals that Big Mom was ''much, much'' more slender and attractive when she was a young woman (though, no doubt, still [[StatuesqueStunner giant]]). Now, finally, it's no longer a mystery as to why she was able to find so many husbands.
* TheJuggernaut: When she's on a rampage, there ain't nothin' you can do about it. [[spoiler:Vinsmoke Judge and the Alliance learned this the hard way.]] Well, except give her the food item she's so craving, but doing that with her hot on your case is obviously a difficult task, and that's ''only'' if her rampage is due to a craving; if she's just pissed at you, then you better run like hell.
* JustBetweenYouAndMe: She has a private talk with Pudding about their plans for the wedding, all while she's hanging Brook like a toy. Somewhat redundant at this point, as pretty much all the Straw Hats know it by now from Pudding spilling the beans to Luffy, Nami, and Reiju (secretly overheard by Sanji), but cavalier nonetheless.
* [[KavorkaMan Kavorka Woman]]: Despite being [[FatBastard obese,]] [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen cruel,]] [[TheCaligula insane]] and a {{Gonk}}, she's had dozens of lovers over the years, even after her beauty has faded. Justified since she kidnapped her husbands.
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:When Chiffon desperately pleads to her to stop her attack on Bege by informing her that they're married and have a child together (Big Mom's grandchild), Big Mom just screams that Chiffon's face pisses her off and that she's going to kill ''her'' as well before recommencing her attack, reducing poor Chiffon to tears]].
* KickTheSonOfABitch: Big Mom's plot to brutally slaughter the [[spoiler:Vinsmoke Family]] is certainly despicable, but it's hard to feel ''too'' bad for [[spoiler:Vinsmoke Judge]] (especially when he has a very pathetic VillainousBreakdown upon learning her plan) because he's an [[AbusiveParent abusive]] [[{{Jerkass}} asshole]]. The same applies to [[spoiler:Judge's sons, Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji, though on a downplayed note because of the [[FreudianExcuse tragic circumstances]] behind their awful behavior (which, for the record, is pretty much completely Judge's fault)]].
* KnightOfCerebus: Of course, being an Emperor, it was expected that facing her and her crew would be much more difficult than anything that's come before; but on top of that, she's easily the most violent, terrifying, and homicidally insane foe the Straw Hats have ever faced. Amazingly, despite the [[SugarBowl bright colors and fairy-tale like aesthetic of the surroundings on her island]], almost every scene she's in manages to suck the fun out of the story's tone until she's gone.
* KnightTemplar: [[spoiler:Her motivation for everything she's done was to follow Carmel's "dream" of creating a "perfect nation" with no discrimination and racism (which, for the record, wasn't ''actually'' Mother Carmel's dream). So, what did Big Mom decide was the best way to do that? Why, ravage entire countries and force people to listen to her commands (''or die'') so they can become "perfect" like her own nation, of course]].
* LackOfEmpathy: After recovering from her first on-screen hunger rage, by eating ''living cream puff tourists'', she is completely unconcerned about the damage to her own capital city, including the fate of one of her sons who tried to calm her down. [[HairTriggerTemper She then begins to get enraged again, the moment she suspects that Jimbei wants to leave her crew.]] [[spoiler:She did have empathy once, but her naivety and the bad influence of her two parental surrogates burned it to the ground and twisted whatever remained]].
* LargeAndInCharge: True to her moniker, she's so big that she can fit a number of her subordinates in her mouth. She's also tall enough to climb sky-scrapers.
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: [[spoiler: She's found by Chopper, Kiko, O-Tama, and Momonosuke, having been washed ashore on Kuri Beach after being knocked off a waterfall by Kaido's [[TheDragon dragon,]] King. She soon awakens, wondering where and ''who'' she is.]]
* LaserGuidedKarma: A lot of her actions eventually come back to bite her.
** Pudding: [[spoiler:Big Mom never protected her from those who bullied her for having a ThirdEye and even contributed to the ridicule herself, only making a token effort by telling her to grow out her fringe so she could hide it. When Pudding was shown kindness by the groom she was supposed to kill, she broke down, fucking up the plot to kill the Vinsmokes, and secretly aided the Straw Hats]].
** Chiffon: [[spoiler:Big Mom never forgave Lola for running out on her own wedding to Prince Loki, which was supposed to make her one step closer to becoming the Pirate King, so she takes it out on Chiffon ''just for being Lola's identical twin''. This eventually resulted in Chiffon disowning most of her family as well as helping her husband Bege assassinate Big Mom without an inch of remorse]].
** Vinsmokes: [[spoiler:Big Mom lured the Vinsmokes with the false promise of an alliance only to set them all up for execution later so she could get their advanced technology (and have some cake, too). While it may have been a KickTheSonOfABitch moment especially for [[AbusiveParents Judge]], once Sanji foils the plot, the understandably pissed-off Vinsmokes decide to return the favor and unleash ''hell'' on Big Mom's forces]].
* LeanAndMean: Not normally, but after a prolonged period in one of her hunger cravings, Big Mom slims down considerably. The effect only serves to [[UncannyValley make her even more unsettling though]]. She was also very slim and attractive when she was in her 20s and thus in her prime, though that didn't account for her personality much.
* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Compared to her fellow malevolent Emperors, she come off a little like this. While Kaido is a sadistic killer who wants to start the war to end all wars out of sheer boredom and disgust with life; and Blackbeard is a conniving, [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder backstabbing]] [[DirtyCoward coward]], Big Mom comes off as a very mentally unwell woman [[spoiler:whose abandonment and treatment as a child left with a badly broken psyche]] and morphed her into the person she is today. She's also the only one of the three with a genuinely benevolent goal (namely creating a place were all races can live together as equals), even if it's horrifically twisted by her insanity, cruelty, and selfishness.
* LikeFatherLikeSon:
** To her own children: Most of her children, especially the older ones take after her evil traits. Pudding is a zigzagged example; [[spoiler:years of bullying and ridicule for having a ThirdEye made the formerly kind-hearted little girl snap. She acts dishonestly as her mother, misleading everyone with a sweet facade before cruelly backstabbing them, but after getting closure with Sanji she reawakened her lost kindness]].
** To Mother Carmel: She knowingly shaped her ideal "Utopia" after Carmel's own. Unknowingly, [[spoiler:she also was a shrewd businesswoman with a talent for acting and lying, just like Carmel, though Carmel's idea of "coexisting different races" was a farce, while Big Mom's is genuine, bar a few exceptions.]]
* LikeFatherUnlikeSon:
** Katakuri is TheStoic, and a sensible if very ruthless fighter who cares for all of his siblings, and doesn't eat very much. [[spoiler:Except in private, he's very much a hammy glutton like his mother; he just doesn't want anyone to see because he sees those parts of him as "flaws"]].
** Pudding appears to be this, being sweet-tempered and helpful [[spoiler:until it's revealed that she's just like her mother in personality. However, once Sanji treats her kindly, Pudding falls in love and adopts her kind facade for real]].
* LiteralMinded: Her goal to turn everyone into her size? [[spoiler:It all originated from a innocent misunderstanding of Mother Carmel's words ''"Seeing others eye to eye"'', which a very young Linlin at the time thought were ExactWords rather than a figure of speech.]]
* MadEye: When she's angry, a single, bloodshot eye is often focused on to convey her hideous temper.
* MadLibsCatchPhrase: "Life or X" or "X or Life" depending on the case.
** "Life or Leave"; what Big Mom asks of every resident on her land, every year. They give two months of their lifespan, or leave.
** "Life or Treat" when she's on a rampage and someone gets in her way: give her what she wants, or she'll take most (if not all) your lifespan.
** She also uses "Stay or Life" when [[spoiler:Jimbei confronts her. He unflinchingly chose "Life", but it turns out she cannot take his life because he doesn't fear her at all.]]
* MakeMeWannaShout: Big Mom is capable of releasing a loud, piercing shriek that instantly causes everybody nearby to cover their ears in pain. It also appears to gain force behind it when combined with her Conqueror's Haki, as it visibly knocks Luffy and Katakuri back. However, the downside for her is that she can only do this after suffering emotional trauma and she doesn't really seem to have any conscious control over it; she unintentionally immobilizes her allies during the tea party [[spoiler:and plays right into the Bege's plan]].
* MamaBear: When Luffy defeats Cracker, she sends an entire army to go after him. But [[spoiler:this is ''inverted'' with Lola, who she despises so much she's ready to send assassins after her.]] In general, she is protective of her family members, but if they fail her in some way she won't hesitate to punish them. She's also far more amiable to her kids that are actually proven useful to her in some way, seeming to ignore those who don't at best, and beating them ''herself'' at worst.
* ManiacTongue: She gets quite slobbery during her hungry rampages. Her eldest son Perospero inherited this trait, too.
* MaritalRapeLicense: According to SBS Vol. 90, Linlin kidnaps at least some of the men who become her husbands and bare her children... and then she dumps them once she has no use for them.
* MightyGlacier: While she mostly makes up for it by being TheJuggernaut, Linlin [[spoiler:even after slimming down]] is greatly lacking in speed compared to many others in the One Piece universe. She relies on her personal Homies to handle anything that requires quickness.
* MisplacedRetribution:
** She ate one of her subordinates because he happened to be nearby when he gave her bad news. She also attacked one of her sons during her first on-screen "hunger rage" where she ''ate'' forty years of his lifespan because the capital city didn't have the sweets she was craving, on hand.
** After [[spoiler:Lola]] ran out on a political marriage to the prince of Elbaf that would've gave Linlin an army of giants and then subsequently ran away from home, Linlin started ''severely'' [[AbusiveParent beating her]] [[spoiler:twin sister Chiffon]] simply because she looks like her.
** When Big Mom was deprived of the chance to eat [[spoiler:the wedding cake at her tea party after Luffy destroyed it]], Big Mom immediately snapped and started killing off cooks left and right just because they couldn't procure a replacement ''right there and then''. This also counts as DisproportionateRetribution.
* MoodSwinger: She's usually a rather pragmatic person, being willing to negotiate if the person has something that might interest her, however when her "food cravings" manifest, she becomes an unstoppable force of eating until the particular craving has been satisfied.
* MoralMyopia: She destroys entire countries for failing to provide her quota for sweets because she hates people who make promises to her that they end up not keeping. [[spoiler:She promises Sanji that she'll spare his crew as long as the marriage goes smoothly, but she actually plans on killing them.]]
* AMotherToHerMen: Despite being literally true -- many of her subordinates are her children or her children-in-law -- it's subverted because she's a BadBoss.
* {{Mutants}}: Most characters in ''One Piece'' get as freakishly powerful as they are by training really, really, ''really'' hard, eating a Devil Fruit, or most likely both. Big Mom is neither. While she ''is'' a Devil Fruit user, most of her sheer, overwhelming power that makes her an Emperor comes from simply being a freak of nature who was ''born'' that way.
* NeverMessWithGranny: She's a badass grandma due to being a powerful pirate in her sixties and by the virtue that a number of her older children are stated to have children of their own; one of them is Pez, the son of her 22nd daughter Chiffon and Firetank captain Capone Bege.
* NiceHat: Her bicorne hat, Napoleon, which has been given life through her powers. It's able to move on its own and generate a sword to attack her foes.
* NighInvulnerability: She has never been known to get hurt, ever. Capone claims that she is an "iron balloon" and never saw her bleed from all kinds of battles. The only vulnerability she has is if the photo of Mother Carmel is damaged which triggers a psychological episode that leaves her weak.
* NightmareFace: She has a rounded witch-like face with a permanent SlasherSmile. And it gets worse [[http://readms.com/r/one_piece/829/3471/12 if she's having one of her psychotic food cravings.]]
* NightmareFetishist: She refers to Brook -- [[DemBones an animated skeleton]] that most people find frightening at first glance -- as "adorable". Later we see her sleeping in bed, her hugging him in her sleep like a teddy bear!
* NoSell: [[spoiler:Nami's powered-up [[ShockAndAwe Thunderbolt Tempo]] (for which she used Zeus as a conductor) '''''fails to even singe her''''']]
* NotHyperbole: Her epithet 'Big Mom' is literal as she has a grand total of ''85 children'' (and is pretty big). Brook even lampshades it.
* NotSoDifferent: To Luffy, impossible as that may seems. [[spoiler:Post-amnessia, she reacted to the people of Kuri giving her food the exact same way Luffy did. Ie, she ''thanked'' them for sharing what little food they had with her and noted that while it's not nearly enough to satisfy her appetite, she really liked it because they are such kind people.]]
* ObliviouslyEvil: [[spoiler:As a little girl she would try to do things like straighten the arm of a kid from the long arm tribe or rip the fin off a fishman kid, which could have led to disaster had Carmel not been there]]. Also present during her bouts of her 'Eating Disorder', as she seems to genuinely have no control of herself nor memory of what she did during her 'hunger rage'. Given the circumstances of her raising and clear insanity, it's not entirely clear whether Big Mom is actually capable of understanding ''any'' of her actions are wrong, as [[spoiler:neither of her ParentalSubstitute figures ever seemed to discipline her or tell her that her actions were wrong unless it suited them; Carmel (who only seemed to intervene when it was detrimental to her own goals) ''wanted'' a killer to sell the Marines at a high price, Streusen saw her as a meal ticket and ''laughed'' at her eating Mother Carmel and the other orphaned children.]]
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse:
** Her tea party "invitations" aren't so much invitations as much as they are a summons order. If you refuse to attend, it's taken as a sign of disrespect, and she [[DecapitationPresentation sends you the severed head]] of somebody close to you in a present box. Of course, it's also implied that bodily harm will come to the person who refused the summons, too.
** This is how she takes over other nations as well. First, she completely destroys the country. Then, once she's got everybody's attention, she makes her offer; "I'll make you a prosperous and happy country, so [[VillainousGlutton bring me sweets]] and follow my orders from here on out or die". No other options.
* OffingTheOffspring: Many of Big Mom's own children (all but Lola, anyway) are afraid of invoking her wrath in any way, and rightfully so, since their mother is a powerful juggernaut that becomes unstoppable when on a food craving. However, it's implied that she doesn't recognize anyone she kills or injures during these craving-induced rampages[[note]]This is actually debatable with new information. Big Mom calls Pudding and Chiffon out by name during her latest hunger craze, contradicting earlier claims that she couldn't recognize her kids [[/note]].
** Subverted with Moscato; despite yanking ''forty years'' out of his lifespan, [[spoiler:it's revealed that he survived as he shows up on a Tarte Ship alive, though covered in bandages]].
** [[spoiler:She also did this to her fifth son Opera during a rampage she fell into after the Whole Cake Chateau collapsed. Considering how Moscato survived a similar incident, Opera's fate is currently unknown]]
* OlderThanTheyLook: She's 68 years old, but she could easily pass for being in her middle ages. In fact, several of her kids (like Perospero) almost look to be the same age as her while her daughter Brulee arguably looks ''older'' than her.
* OmnicidalManiac: When her eating disorder rears up, she will kill and destroy '''anything and everything''' without conscience until she gets her craving sated.
* OneBadMother: She doesn't just have the moniker "Big Mom", she literally is one, with an enormous family of children and grandchildren who serve as her personal army.
* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler:After eight hours without eating and on a rampage, Big Mom begins losing a large amount of weight, and her sun homie Prometheus fuses into her hair, giving her the appearance of a monstrous demon.]]
* OrcusOnHisThrone: Seems to have shades of this, having more interest on amassing military power, knowledge and allies than actually doing villanous deed, and her favored course of action seems to be sending her generals, army and/or subordinates to deal with any problem rather than dealing with it herself. That said, when Brook got into the treasure room, [[OhCrap she wanted to handle the situation herself.]]
* OreOnna: Uses the masculine pronoun ''ore''.
* OurSoulsAreDifferent: In her case, her soul manifests in the form of small shadow creatures called "Incarnations".
* ParentalAbandonment: Her parents grudgingly left her on Elbaf because [[spoiler:she kept causing too much destruction around her due to her strength. Then her ParentalSubstitute vanished, leaving her alone again]].
* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: Of the three marriages we've seen arranged (Aladine and Praline, Capone and Chiffon, and Pudding and Sanji), two ended up being perfect romances (with Chiffon and Capone bringing a child into the world.) Sanji and Pudding don't want to get married due to the circumstances, but are shown to be on very good terms and have similar interests ([[spoiler:at least until it was revealed that Pudding was EvilAllAlong... though they again appear to be perfect for each other once Pudding pulls a HeelFaceTurn]]).
* PersonOfMassDestruction: She was already capable of slaughtering a clan of ''giants'' and leveling their entire village at ''5 years old'', and she's only gained more destructive power as an adult. Fittingly, the title of chapter 866 [[LampshadeHanging Lampshades]] this by attributing the nickname '''the natural born destroyer''' to her.
* PetTheDog: When she's not in one of her hunger-induced rampages, she seems to care for her children to at least a small extent.
** One example is a bit zig-zagged: When Sanji asks for her to spare his crew in exchange for his submission, she agrees, not out of kindness (in fact, she openly states that Luffy does deserve to pay for what he's done), but because this means that the wedding between Pudding and Sanji will go on uninterrupted. [[SkewedPriorities This means that she'll be able to have wedding cake.]]
** She also seemed legitimately overjoyed that Sanji was not at all repulsed by the idea of marrying Pudding. This shows that while she will not tolerate even the slightest deviation from her plans, she is especially happy when her own children are happy with her decision. [[spoiler:This turned out to be a lie since she and Pudding plan to [[YankTheDogsChain kill him and his family at the wedding to get their cloning technology.]]]]
* PlayingWithFire: While she's better known for her ability to control the weather, she can also use her homie Prometheus to create massive fire "storms" as well (apparently, touching him does not cause her any discomfort).
* PowersDoTheFighting: She lets her Homies fight on her behalf most of the time, but that doesn't mean she isn't dangerous without them, being able to essentially kill with a touch and having immense physical strength and haki.
* PregnantBadass: Considering that she spent 42 of her 68 years getting pregnant year after year, she used to be pregnant for most of her life.
* PsychopathicManchild:
** She's practically a grown up woman who loves to have tea parties with delicious sweets and baked goods. Wouldn't seem so bad except she's willing to decimate whole islands for ''wedding cake ingredients alone'' with little room for compromise. Case in point, willing to destroy Fishman Island since they couldn't deliver their allotted candy despite the machinery being destroyed during Hody's attempted coup and them willing to continue the order once it's fixed. Plus likewise threatening to kill people who don't come to her parties and singing and dancing about said tea parties with lyrics that the strawberry jam can be the usual or be made of ''people's blood''. And if that wasn't enough, she suddenly goes on a rampage ''not long after'' singing this song and begins eating anything she can get her hands on just because there was a certain sweet she wanted to eat and ''didn't have it''. Even killing one of her sons when he tries to calm her down because she's too enraged to listen to reason until she finally gets it. Just... Yeesh. What's worse is that these rages are completely unpredictable; even she doesn't know when she's going to get a craving, or for what, and they always manifest without warning.
** Furthermore, [[spoiler:chapters 866 and 867 reveal that Big Mom's entire motivation for throwing tea parties stems from the happy memory of her 6th birthday party being ruined by Mother Carmel and all of her friends suddenly disappearing on the spot. She's basically a ''severely'' regressed adult whose massive abandonment issues influenced her to obsessively and repeatedly try recreate her happiest childhood memory. Add in her ReallyGetsAround tendencies with men as an adult and Sigmund Freud would probably have a field day with her]].
* RealityEnsues:
** Being a controlling, abusive parent [[spoiler:resulted in one daughter running away on her own wedding day, and three other daughters betraying her]].
** Her hunger rampages are taken seriously, especially by her own children who are essentially governors of their own islands. If Big Mom takes her rampages to one of the islands, her children will do everything they can to protect the civilian populace [[spoiler:as shown with Amande, who desperately tried to stop Big Mom from destroying Nuts Island, and is later seen looking forlornly at the aftermath]].
** Because the various homes, including Zeus and Prometheus, are made from her own soul, they're more likely to betray her if she falls into a psychotic break.
* ReallyGetsAround: Well, given the number of children and husbands she's had, this is a given. This is also far less surprising when you see how she [[IWasQuiteTheLooker used to look]] back in her young adulthood. ''But'', considering she still has small children even today at 68... [[BrainBleach You may now go scrub your brain off]].
** In fact, an SBS revealed that she gave birth about once a year from sometime in her early 20s to at ''least'' her early 60s (judging by the fact that she's 68 but still has small children)... meaning that she must've been swapping out husbands and/or men every year for 42 years.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure:
** Surprisingly enough. Outside of her extreme cravings, she can be rather reasonable and even forgiving. For one, she was willing to let Jimbei part ways with Big Mom, even after she married one of her daughters to Aladdin (his subordinate)... at least with a price he has to pay. She even was willing to allow the other Straw Hats go free and alive at Sanji's request, provided Sanji doesn't try to pull anything. Though the leer she gives him makes it clear that she's still not someone to be crossed, no matter who you are. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope In truth,]] she actually is planning to have Sanji and the Straw Hats killed and only told him this to keep him happy and complacent.]]
** [[spoiler:All in all, subverted and somewhat exploited. Big Mom is skilled at making herself merely ''appear'' to be reasonable and nice (when in a good mood) which draws people in and makes them think they can make a deal with her and come out better than her. In reality, she always sets things up so it will all go in her favor, and anyone who attempts to defy her invariably is killed, one way or another.]]
* ReplacementGoldfish: Her dream of having a diverse family with members of each species is to replace [[spoiler:her foster family that "disappeared" when she was 6 years old.]]
* ResignationsNotAccepted:
** Anyone trying to leave her crew has to play a game where they sacrifice body parts based on where the roulette wheel lands. It's actually meant to be universally fatal, with just the illusion of choice. And it's implied from Charlotte Brulee that this extends to everyone in Totto Land as well.
** Possibly some overlap with NeverBeHurtAgain. It can be reasoned that after [[spoiler:having her family abandon her twice (once by her real parents, the second time when Carmel vanished)]], Big Mom's established this policy so as to prevent being abandoned yet again. She invites and welcomes anyone who wants to join her crew and become her friend. But if they try to leave, she ensures they not only die for attempting to do so, but they suffer for it as well if they manage to survive.
* TheReveal:
** Why are Tea Parties so important? [[spoiler:Her 6th birthday was a Tea Party which was the best day of her life. She was surrounded by Mother Carmel who she thought loved her and the rest of the smiling orphaned children who were of different races. Oh and she ate delicious cake. Unfortunately, on what was the happiest day of her life, Mother Carmel and all of her friends vanished without a trace. This event where everyone disappeared is so traumatic for her, she's living her whole life just trying to recreate that day, working towards a dream of having a family of all the races that's physically the same size as her, having tea parties with them, eating cake and having her photo of Mother Carmel across her seat as if she never left]].
** How did Big Mom become so monstrously insane like she is now? [[spoiler:Her two adoptive parental figures, Mother Carmel and Streusen, basically enabled her worst traits and only disciplined her when it suited them to fulfill their own ulterior goals a la Doflamingo and his Executives. This created a severely warped moral compass, where whatever good intentions she had is twisted by untreated insanity]].
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Starts going on one ''immediately'' after snapping out of her VillainousBreakdown during the chaos at Sanji and Pudding's "wedding", with her sights set firmly on the Straw Hats and their allies.
* {{Sadist}}: Possibly the worst one in the series;
** She ''loves'' violence to the point of encouraging it in her children and going into an excited, manic rave when imagining and describing Sanji dying a brutal, gory death by [[BoomHeadshot headshot]] and his entire family being similarly executed on the spot.
** She's incredibly cruel to her enemies, making it a point to give them {{Hope Spot}}s before crushing their expectations as brutally as possible. She also takes joy in deceiving people and, again, encourages this behavior in her kids.
** She finds it amusing to keep [[AndIMustScream live humans trapped helplessly]] in menageries, like a kid capturing butterflies and keeping them pinned behind glass containers.
** When she defeats other pirate crews that invade her territory, she makes sure to either humiliate and maim them before kicking them out, ''or'' - for those who really cross her - makes them spin a roulette wheel to decide their punishment (which, of course, is actually rigged to kill the spinner no matter what they land on).
** [[spoiler:Subverted when she was a child, as while she ''did'' cause a lot of damage and pain, she genuinely had no ill intent or idea what she was doing was wrong and [[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength most of it was due to not knowing how strong she actually was.]] Given the closest thing she ever had to a father ''laughed'' at her devouring Mother Carmel and the other orphans alive, it's not hard to guess where she learned to enjoy the suffering she caused.]]
* SadisticChoice: Her ''Soul Pocus'', with the catchphrase of "Life or <something she wants>?". Give her what she wants, or she'll [[YourSoulIsMine yank your life out of you.]] Worse still, she can turn this into a MortonsFork: "Dead or Life?" The only known defense is to be NotAfraidToDie, and the technique fails entirely.
* SanityHasAdvantages: [[spoiler:The entire plan to assassinate her at the Tea Party relies on exploiting her psychological trauma from Carmel's disappearance to leave her vulnerable by destroying Big Mom's picture of her. Furthermore, she only has full control over homies when in the midst of a lucid interval; whenever she has a psychotic break, they can be persuaded to turn against her.]]
* SerialSpouse: She takes a man as her husband, whether he wants it or not, then after she's had his child or children, she dumps him and moves on to the next one. This has happened 43 times.
* SinisterSentientSun: Prometheus is a sun-shaped Homie formed from a portion of Big Mom's soul, and antagonistic towards the Straw Hats.
* SlasherSmile: Seems to be a requirement if you're a villainous Emperor.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: The only one of the Four Emperors to be female.
* SoulPower: Her Devil Fruit, the Soul-Soul Fruit (Soru Soru no Mi), allows her to freely manipulate people's souls in the form of lifespan, which she can give or take away either by herself or through her "Incarnations", which are manifestations of her own soul.
* StartOfDarkness: [[spoiler:It's heavily implied that Mother Carmel's sudden disappearance was hers. Big Mom was already a CreepyChild (albeit a sweet-hearted one) who would unintentionally cause destruction everywhere she went, but when Mother Carmel disappeared and she got raised by Streusen instead right afterwards, she turned into a ''monster'']].
* StatuesqueStunner: She [[https://i.redd.it/akozqdb3ihdz.jpg appears to have been quite beautiful and slender at age 28]] and probably for the most of her adulthood. Even though we can't see her body in that picture, she was no doubt still as tall as ever back then.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: [[ZigZaggingTrope Both played Straight and Averted]] to varying degrees with her many children. Brûlée and Perospero resemble her the most, both looking like much thinner versions of her, and her eldest daughter Compote is her splitting image except for the fruit theme and hair color. Meanwhile, some of her kids such as Pudding and Katakuri don't look like her at all. Then there's [[spoiler:Lola]] and Chiffon who look more like a mix between her and their father Pound. And as for why so many of her daughters are attractive despite her revolting appearance, an SBS later reveals that she was once beautiful herself as a younger woman, so her genes aren't quite as bad as previously thought.
* SuperPowerLottery: She has eaten the Soul-Soul Fruit, allowing her to take the lifeforce from anyone she touches. She can then use this lifeforce to give life to [[AnimateInanimateObject inanimate objects]]. Everything in Totto Land is alive thanks to this power, [[WeatherManipulation including the weather]], which obeys her every whim. Her vast numbers of children hint that it even gives her an [[LifeDrinker increased lifespan]]. In combat, one hit is good enough to steal a person's soul, so she can essentially kill anyone she can get her hands on. All this is on top of being giant by human standards and being a freak of nature born abnormally powerful to the point she could easily kill full grown giants at ''age five''.
* SuperStrength: Even [[SuperStrongChild as a child]] she was inhumanly strong; she once broke a giant's bones trying to swat a mosquito on him, and accidentally killed a bear in one blow trying to discipline it. When she was no older than six, her strength was said to be greater than ''Cipher Pol itself'' and compared to that of an '''Admiral''' or even '''''Fleet Admiral.''''' As an adult, her absurd strength has not gone away, and she practically destroyed her room trying to casually swat a fly. Even more impressive is all this power is ''innate'' as opposed to everyone else in the One Piece world who has to undergo serious training to get even close to that level of strength.
* SuperToughness: As speculated by Sanji and confirmed by Capone Bege, her body is apparently like an "iron balloon" and she's so tough that she can simply shrug off gunshots and cannons without being injured. Even as a 5-year old child, she can [[spoiler:tank a giant's equally giant sword, outright breaking it in the process.]] However, she'll lose that toughness if she's saddened by anything happening to Mother Carmel's photo; she'll even bleed easily.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Not her, but her "soul" powers are very similar to Moria's powers. She can use her power to give life to inanimate things that blindly follow her orders like Moria with his zombies reanimated by the shadows. The only difference being that Moria's power transplanted that person's personality into said zombie and it only worked on non living artificial bodies, meaning he needed Hogback to create zombies for him for it to even work. The shadows can also be put into a living person to empower said person for a time. Big Mom's powers, on the other hand, work on ''any'' object (but not on people) and the planted soul acts as extensions of her own will rather than that of the soul's original owner. Both can also create separate manifestations of themselves, Moria with his [[LivingShadow Doppelman]] and Big Mom with her "incarnations".
* SweetTooth: One of the first things we learn of her. Now that Whitebeard is dead, she's taken over protecting Fishman Island in exchange for lots and lots of candy. Their issues with Hody Jones and Vander Decken have halted their supply of sweets to her, and she doesn't care one bit, even when offered the fabulous trove of Ryugu Kingdom's treasure as recompense; she only relents on her promise to totally annihilate the Fishman Island when Luffy challenges her and convinces her to take up her grudge with him instead. To top it all of, her nation Totto Land is a LevelAte full of sweets, which she tends to eat whenever she's angry, and it's worth to notice that she's gone into an UnstoppableRage only when grieving a sweet.
* TautologicalTemplar: To the extreme of extremes. She honestly believes that she and her goal of "world peace" is so infallibly righteous that anything and everything she does is above reproach. ''Even if that includes outright genocide.'' Combine that with her notorious HairTriggerTemper and the fact that she's a VillainousGlutton with HorrorHunger, and she makes Godzilla look tame, aside from Anno's interpretation.
* TeenPregnancy: Her oldest son Perospero is 50 years old, which means that she was 18 years old when she gave birth to him.
* TemporaryBulkChange: Eight hours into one of her eating fits [[spoiler:she loses the [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment bulk of her bulk then she eats the wedding cake made by Sanji and regains all of the weight back]].]]
* TheresNoKillLikeOverkill:
** While she's sleeping, she and her Homies tend to go all out. A small fly that was zipping by got completely obliterated for its troubles.
** On a less comical note, she also [[spoiler: plans to do this to the entire Vinsmoke family, intending to have her crew shoot them to death and then continue to riddle their corpses with bullets while they all celebrate on top of them]].
* TouchOfDeath: Thanks to her Devil Fruit, a swipe of her hand can steal most of a person's lifespan. [[spoiler:It only works against people who fear death though; Jimbei managed to NoSell it due to his complete lack of fear of Big Mom.]]
* TragicVillain: [[spoiler: Big Mom was pretty much doomed from the start, being born innocent like any other child but just being a natural born killer; by the time she was 5, she was so big and strong that even her naive, childlike curiosities would result in death and destruction. [[FromBadToWorse And then her only parental figures]] enabled her worst behaviors and her first one 'disappeared' resulting in her becoming a complete psychological mess]]. Ultimately, she's less of a monster like Blackbeard or Doflamingo and more a seriously mentally unwell woman who's [[spoiler:a product of many tragic factors completely outside her control.]] With nothing but bad role models and Streusen helping to spur her into piracy, Big Mom became a monster who just takes what she wants and enjoys making people suffer when they don't obey her every whim.
* TraumaButton: Anyone who damages the photo of Mother Carmel at a Tea Party will trigger a psychological episode. The thought of losing the photo is enough to spark the memory of Mother Carmel's disappearance.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: She underestimates pretty much all of her enemies in the Whole Cake Island Arc, treating them like mild nuisances and then being shocked when her plans start to fall apart because of this.
* UnskilledButStrong:
** Big Mom's swordsmanship (when she bothers to use [[LivingWeapon Napoleon]]) isn't the prettiest, but she's just so dang ''strong'' that all she has to do is [[https://i.imgur.com/0t4nUHC.png swing her sword like a baseball bat]] and she can ''easily'' cause massive destruction and damage to whoever and whatever is on the receiving end.
** In general, she doesn't appear to be trained in any particular form of combat; both her devil fruit and her own body are so powerful that she needs nothing more to overwhelm even the strongest opponents.
* UnstoppableRage: Due to an eating disorder, she sometimes has devastating tantrums if she isn't fed exactly what she wants, destroying buildings, friends and foes alike. The first time it was shown onscreen, she even attacked her own son and shaved ''forty years'' off of his lifespan in her blind rage, and ate it!
* UnwittingPawn: Her backstory revealed that [[spoiler:Streusen, her own head chef]] has been manipulating her since she was 'abandoned' by Mother Carmel.
* UsedToBeASweetKid: Boy howdy, was she ever. She really had good intentions as a child, to the point that Mother Carmel outright tells her that she's got a kind heart, but her [[spoiler:AmbiguousDisorder combined with a case of DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength makes her a pariah, and she becomes cruel as an adult.]]
* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: When we see her home turf, Totto Land, through the eyes of Luffy, this is what the locals say about her character. According to them, she's seeking to make a Utopia where all races live peacefully side by side, in homes made of candy, never having to worry about pirates, marines, or misfortune of any kind. [[ExactWords It is never mentioned if all inhabitants are there by choice,]] and all of them are potential food. It isn't just people either, she seeks to make a menagerie of all the world's animals and then gives them a facsimile of sentience by [[spoiler: forcing fragments of people's souls into them which she takes from the residents as a 6-monthly "tax."]]
* VillainousBreakdown: Everything about the wedding goes to hell so fast that it renders Big Mom simply frozen in-place, unable to act, because she's completely unsure where to direct all her rage at first. The Straw Hats have to get her to focus on the thing they want her to freak out about, because her doing nothing at all is actually detrimental to their plan.
* VillainousGlutton: She has a large obsession with eating sweets. To the point where she runs her empire on a monopoly of sweets and goods. She will raze islands if they aren't able to provide their goods. She often goes on rampages where she blacks out until her sweet tooth craving is settled and won't have a recollection of what happened afterwards. In the current story, her primary goal in the wedding is to obtain the Germa 66 tech and have wedding cake. In the past, [[spoiler: when she was 5 years old she went on a rampage in Elbaf and destroyed a village for semla (a Scandinavian treat). On her 6th birthday, she consumed so much semla she didn't notice that Mother Carmel and the other orphans disappeared. It's implied she ate them all.]]
* VillainousLegacy: [[spoiler:Of Mother Carmel. Everything that Big Mom is today was a result of Mother Carmel's influence and further shaped by Streusen's encouragement. It's also played with, in that it wasn't "The Mountain Witch" that inspired her villainy but rather the "Holy Mother" image that Carmel projected to hide her activities as a slave trader. The false ideals Carmel espoused are those that Big Mom took as her own, only to be twisted by her selfishness and cruelty, creating a pirate Emperor that continues to terrorize the seas ''decades'' after Carmel's passing]].
* [[HeroicRROD Villainous R.R.O.D.]]: Big Mom's craving rampages make her an utter juggernaut that won't be stopped by anything. However, if she ends up spending an extensive period of time in her rampage, it does start to take its toll on her body. After about eight hours of chasing the Straw Hats nonstop, Big Mom has noticeably slimmed down and in Chapter 889, she collapsed onto her hands and knees with apparent exhaustion. Reuniting with Prometheus and Zeus has restored some of her stamina but the rampage has still made her look drastically different.
* VillainRespect: She actually commends Brook for dealing damage to her three strongest homies, claiming that nobody has ever done such a feat before.
* VillainSong: "Bloody Party", about the preparations for the Tea Party, which was alluded to in the manga but sung in full in the anime. As to be expected from her, it has a ton of LyricalDissonance despite the cheery upbeat melody to it. Especially stands out as the ''only'' VillainSong sung in the series itself.
* VillainTeamUp: Following the Straw Hats' escape from Totland, she attempts to gain Kaido's cooperation so that she can kill Luffy, invoking YouOweMe. Kaido isn't for it, saying that Luffy is his to kill and that their debt was from long ago.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Among the citizens of Totto Land, there is nobody who doesn't sing her praises... At least those who aren't too close to her when she gets hungry... or angry, ''or both.''
* VisionaryVillain: She has dreams of creating a "perfect" world with no discrimination or war (courtesy of Mother Carmel's (fake) teachings) and has dedicated her entire life to pursuing this vision. Of course, her insanity and violent tendencies mean that she's perfectly willing to [[InsaneTrollLogic destroy countries, effectively enslave people, and murder however many innocents "necessary" for her to achieve this "peace"]]. Also, satisfying her appetite [[SkewedPriorities generally takes priority over her vision]].
* WeaksauceWeakness:
** [[spoiler: According to Capone Bege, Big Mom's incredibly durable body is only vulnerable in ''one'' specific instance; if a picture of a woman named "Mother Carmel" (who she once held dear to her) is damaged in front of her, she has a severe FreakOut and her body will apparently become susceptible to injury. Bege plans to use this time to have Caesar give her a fatal dose of poison]].
** [[spoiler: Her devil fruit-power, while quite powerful, apparently can't drain or pull life-force out of a target who is not at least a little afraid of death. Meaning it's more or less useless against true bearers of the Will of D (such as Luffy) and others who aren't afraid to die.]]
* WeatherManipulation: Her ability to give life to inanimate objects extends to Totto Land's weather; her left hand controls "Zeus the Thunder Cloud" and her right controls "Prometheus the Sun".
* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler: Her dream is to unite every race in the world in her perfect, peaceful country of Totto Land where no racism or conflict exists and everyone gets along. Of course, her childlike mentality and utter insanity means that, to achieve this, she's willing to use violence, brute force and extortion to force people to follow her commands and live in her country. After all, anyone who rejects such an offer must be selfish and thus deserves to die.]]
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: As destructive, monstrous, and downright heinous her actions are, her FreudianExcuse of [[spoiler:being born with more sheer power and appetite than any parent knew what to do with, being abandoned by her real parents then having her ParentalSubstitute (who was in fact a human trafficker in disguise who saw her more as a weapon than a child) 'disappear' on her birthday along with all her loved ones, and being raised from ''age six'' to be the way she is by someone who saw her primarily as a meal ticket and found her more awful deeds amusing, and who egged on her worst behaviors ''after she ate the last person in a fit of hunger'']] is genuinely tragic and PlayedForDrama.
* TheWorfBarrage: When Jimbei openly defied her by asking for resignation during Pudding's Tea Party, she tries to take his soul. [[spoiler:It didn't work, because her powers work by the victim's fear for her and death, and [[StaringDownCthulhu he just]] [[NoBadassToHisValet isn't afraid]] [[ImNotAfraidOfYou of her.]]]]
* WorldsStrongestWoman: Implied; the four emperors are said to be the four strongest pirates of the world, and she's the [[TheSmurfettePrinciple only female member.]]
* WorthyOpponent:
** When Luffy stands up to her in defense of Fishman Island, she decides to pursue him instead, despite being fairly sure that he's just taking the blame to spare them. The fact that he's willing to do so at all impresses her, so it shows that she's not without a bit of honor from time to time. Luffy also openly states with her on the other end of the line that he'll be Pirate King, and beat her up, which pisses her off... [[ActuallyPrettyFunny but later is shown to be amused]] by such boasts -- albeit likely due to being in a very good mood over the wedding preparations. When said wedding plot goes awry thanks to Luffy, she wants to personally avenge this outrage, and is actually infuriated when her second son and possibly strongest commander captures him on her behalf.
** She seems to treat Brook somewhere between this and a pet. While he got stomped pretty handily when he went against her to steal the Poneglyph scrawlings, she wanted to add him to her collection, and somewhat respectfully noted that nobody had ever, ever done damage to Zeus and Prometheus before he came around.
* WoundThatWillNotHeal: Downplayed. Prometheus complains that the wound he received from his battle with Brook is hard to heal. Big Mom doesn't pay it much attention.
* YouDontLookLikeYou: [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120101192607/onepiece/images/9/9b/BigMomGP.jpg Her initial silhouette]] looks incredibly different from what we've seen of her final design. There's a possibility that this is due to different perspectives, one from the front and the other from the lower side.
* YouGotSpunk: She is known to show some mercy or leniency to people who have her ire but don't back down.
** She spares Fishman Island from her wrath when Luffy claims he ate the candy meant for her. She doubts the truth of the situation, but is willing to refocus her anger on the Straw Hats.
** When she faces a captured Pedro some years ago, her wheel decided he and his crewman who had survived to this point must pay a hundred years. After taking the crewman's remaining thirty years, she looks to take seventy from Pedro. Pekoms is able to ask for leniency, so she drops ten off the total. She is still pissed about [[spoiler:Pedro destroying one of Baron Tamago's eyes, so Pedro pulls out his own eye and offers it to her]]. This act impresses her and she decides to take 50 years of his.
* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: As a volume cover finally reveals, she has bright pink hair similar to her daughter Chiffon [[spoiler:and Lola]].
* YouHaveFailedMe:
** Opera, one of her own children, notes that she'll flat out kill him if she finds out that he failed to keep Luffy imprisoned. She also plans to kill [[spoiler: Lola]] for running out on a marriage that would've given her immense military power.
** She also takes the life of several of her chefs when [[spoiler:they state that they can't make a new wedding cake so quickly after the first one was ruined by the "Luffies".]]
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Pound, one of the many suitors to Big Mom, states he was cast aside by her once she got two daughters out of him and left stuck in the Seducing Woods, and allowing the executives to dispose of him as they see fit. He later states that she does this to most, if not all, of her husbands, since it's just a means to an end to build up her forces, and that she cares more of her "blood and flesh" than their fathers.
* YouOweMe: Claims that Kaido is in debt to her due to an unknown arrangement in their pasts, despite Kaido's claims that it's a long passed debt.
* YourSizeMayVary: Although her official size is ''880 cm (28'10.5"), she at minimum seems to range around height of Gecko Moria's range (22 feet). But other instances, such as her hunger rampage on her capital, (especially in the anime), increases her height to gargantuan size to at least twice that!
* YourSoulIsMine: She has eaten the Soul-Soul Fruit, which allows her to steal the life essence of a person, gaining years of their life for herself and killing them in the process. She can then use this lifeforce to create {{Animate Inanimate Object}}s, which is how everything in her kingdom is alive. She routinely takes portions of a person's lifespan as a "tax" for staying on her islands, which is how she's amassed such a collection of life.
[[/folder]]

!!New Emperors

[[folder:Marshall D. Teach -- "Blackbeard"]]
!!Marshall D. Teach -- "Blackbeard"
!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/AkioOhtsuka (JP), Cole Brown (EN, pre-timeskip)
!!!'''Age:''' 38 (Pre-Timeskip), 40 (Post-Timeskip)
!!!'''Birthday:''' August 3rd
!!!'''Debut:''' Chapter 223 (Manga), Episode 146 (Anime)

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/marshall_d_teach_anime.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[labelnote:Click here to see his Post-TimeSkip appearance]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blackbeard_post_timeskip.png[[/labelnote]]]]

->''"This "New Era" they keep rambling on and on about is a load of crap! The era where pirates dream of treasure will come to an end!? Yeah Right! Zehahahahahahahaha! '''The dreams of pirates will never end!!! Am I right?'''"''

Captain, later admiral, of the [[Characters/OnePieceBlackbeardPirates Blackbeard Pirates]] and an ambitious former member of the [[Characters/OnePieceWhitebeardPirates Whitebeard Pirates]], specifically in the second division led by Portgas D. Ace, whose fate seems entwined with Luffy's, and currently one of the Emperors. He has eaten the Dark-Dark Fruit (''Yami Yami no Mi''), a Logia which affords him the power of darkness. All-in-all, he's a somewhat difficult man to read. Like others with the initial "D." in their names, he's kind of a big deal.\\\

Beginning as a as a no-name pirate who made an impact on Luffy in Jaya, Marshall D. Teach "Blackbeard"'s relevance to the story and the One Piece world took a dramatic turn when he defeated Ace and turned him over to the Marines, securing a position as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. However, his newfound status was merely a a means to an end, as he entered Impel Down during the Marineford war and recruited some high-bounty pirates into his crew, then then headed to Marineford during the climax of the Whitebeard war, and with his crew finished off a weakened Whitebeard, somehow taking Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit (''Gura Gura no Mi'') power for his own before departing after Shanks' arrival. Two years later, it's revealed that he took over Whitebeard's territory and is now one of the Four Emperors, having taking over Whitebeard's vacant spot. He and his crew are now searching for high level Devil Fruit users to kill so they can steal their powers.\\\

After the timeskip, Blackbeard doesn't make his first real appearance until chapter 925, a good 8 years removed from his last in-the-flesh appearance. Additionally, his henchmen, old and new, regularly appear to wreck havoc on anyone they cross path with.\\\

He was notable for becoming a Warlord with a former bounty of 0, having been almost completely unknown beforehand. However, after becoming an Emperor, he's revealed to have racked up a bounty of 2,247,600,000 berries, currently the largest yet shown in the series.
-----
* AlmightyJanitor: He was in the service of Whitebeard for over 22 years, and was offered the spot of 2nd Division commander when it was vacant, due to his strength, durability, and [[EpilepticTrees maybe]] knowledge of Haki, but he declined, saying he had no such ambitions, giving his support to Ace. Long story short, [[FaceHeelTurn he lied]]...[[MetaphoricallyTrue or perhaps rather]], his [[VisionaryVillain ambitions went far above being under an Emperor]].
** In addition, he becomes a Warlord with a former bounty of 0, being an absolute unknown before then. This changes when his post-timeskip status comes with a staggering bounty of 2,247,600,000, which is easily the biggest jump in bounty in the series, the first bounty revealed that crosses into 2 billion, and the first Yonko to have their bounty revealed, showing that Blackbeard has become not just a credible threat with ease, but one who everyone worth their salt is now aware of.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: His skin is darker than most of the characters, and according to Oda his nationality in the real world would be UsefulNotes/{{Somalia}}.
* AnimalMotifs: Not particularly obvious as such (was approved by the creator) but an edition of the warlords figures came with animal themes. What was Blackbeard?... A hippo. Though initially seeming a little goofy this is in fact a very apt choice as hippos are known for deceptive appearances being described as truly unpredictable and one of, if not THE most dangerous animals in the world. This also is somewhat accurate around his sheer size and his ability to appear both harmless, stupid, clever and terrifying (not to mention his stout body and broken and missing teeth making him look like a hippo in a way.)
* ArchEnemy:
** To Luffy himself; who holds Blackbeard chief responsible for Marineford and all that went wrong there, most of all being [[MyGreatestFailure Ace's death]], regardless of Blackbeard having not ''physically'' sealed the matter. It may be mutual, given in their first conversation since then in Dressrosa, Blackbeard seemed unsettlingly delighted that Luffy was back in the game.
** From his first appearance to his eventual imprisonment at Impel Down, Ace considered Blackbeard this due to his murder of Thatch. Even with Whitebeard himself telling Ace not to go after Blackbeard, he felt personally responsible as Thatch was a close friend while Teach was a member of his division.
* BadassBeard: One of the most straightfoward examples of this trope. True to his epithet, he has a black beard which gets longer in every appearance, reflecting his current status and power. In his first appearance, when he's still a noone, he has barely a PermaStubble, then, after he becomes a Warlord, he has a short black beard. After the two year time-skip, during which he has become one of the ''Four Emperors'', he has a long braided beard, just like the real life Blackbeard.
* BadassBoast: "THIS IS '''MY ERA'''!"
* BaitTheDog: He seemed nice to Luffy and his crew, but the Marineford Arc gave us a true idea of his personality as someone who is more concerned with power than TrueCompanions.
* BatmanGambit: Successfully playing off of Whitebeard's familial protectiveness of his 'children'? Using the war to infiltrate Impel Down and double his crew size knowing the whole world's attention would be on Marineford? Certainly qualifies.
* BeardOfEvil: It has taken three costume changes, but he has finally gotten one. It's even tied up in singular strands like his real life namesake.
* BigBadEnsemble: The BigBad of the Whitebeard War saga, having kick-started the Whitebeard War, [[spoiler:became an Emperor after killing Whitebeard himself]], and currently ties with Sakazuki as the primary antagonist for the series.
* BigDamnVillains: During the [[spoiler:Impel Down arc]], Luffy is having a tough time getting [[spoiler:Hannyabal]] to stay down. Blackbeard then shows up and knocks him out in one shot.
** He also pulls a spectacular one just as [[spoiler:Whitebeard is going to town on the Marines after Ace's death]]. He even [[spoiler:recruited several new crew members from Impel Down. His crew descends on Whitebeard and kills him]].
* BigEater: He debuts in a seemingly throwaway scene in which he attempts to match Luffy pound for pound in food. [[{{Foreshadowing}} They just happen to have opposite tastes]].
* BlessedWithSuck: His Dark-Dark powers have some drawbacks. It's unique among the Logias in that it ''doesn't'' make him [[ElementalShapeshifter immune to physical strikes]] (he in fact speculates that it might even make them hurt ''more'') and projectiles are slightly drawn to him. In fact, the only way he can protect himself with his power is if he sees the attack coming first and then absorbs it with his darkness powers. This wouldn't be much of a drawback if he was a [[NoNonsenseNemesis more serious fighter]] but he often lets down his guard and will even [[BossBanter talk to his opponents]] in the middle of a fight leaving himself open to attack.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Blackbeard will step on anyone to achieve his goals, and appears incapable of understanding the concept of "grudges". For example, when Ace confronts him about killing Thatch, he pretty much brushes off the issue and invites Ace to join his crew, despite it being painfully obvious that Ace has come for vengeance.
* BoisterousBruiser: He's big, cheerful, idealistic, AffablyEvil, cares for the well-being of his men, is a BigEater matching Luffy, and [[BloodKnight loves a good fight]]. If anything, what makes his actions unnerving is that he doesn't seem to have an "off" switch for his friendliness, as seen when he cheerfully addresses Ace and tries to recruit him while planning to murder Luffy.
* BullyingADragon: Mocks Whitebeard to his face, insulting his inability to [[spoiler:save Ace]] and the fact that his [[PersonOfMassDestruction Devil Fruit]] is useless against Blackbeard's [[PowerNullifier own.]] Whitebeard responds with a spear to the shoulder and a quake-punch that has Teach begging for his life.
* CainAndAbel: As the Whitebeard Pirates consider each other their captain's adopted children and call him "father", Teach killing Thatch for his Devil Fruit makes him the Cain to the latter's Abel.
* CaptainColorbeard: Just like his namesake.
* CastingAShadow: The concept of the Dark-Dark Fruit seems to be turning the user into a living black hole.
* ChekhovsGunman: You know that bar patron who ate cherry pies, and told Luffy to follow his dreams? He's that guy who laid waste to the Drum Kingdom, and scared King Wapol away. He's also the guy who Ace is after, and murdered Thatch - one of the world's strongest man's top commanders: You know, '''Blackbeard'''. Even one of the early databooks called him "''Cherry Pie Man''".
* TheChessmaster: One particularly adept at XanatosSpeedChess. At this point, he's likely on par with Crocodile's cunning. His plan to become the Pirate King has so far included [[spoiler:throwing his former commander to the World Government to detract attention away from himself. ''Using'' that feat in order to become a Warlord of the Sea to gain access to Impel Down. Relying on the whole world being too focused on the Marines' war against Whitebeard (over the aforementioned commander) to notice him breaking into Impel Down and recruiting the worst criminals held there into his crew. Finally, showing up in the middle of said war to kill Whitebeard and steal his Devil Fruit power]]. Damn...
* ChewingTheScenery: The quote above, among others.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Did this to every superior he encountered in his pirate career. Second Commander Ace and Captain Whitebeard of the Whitebeard Pirates (it's even implied that he did this literally to Thatch in the anime), and the World Government as he renounced his Warlord title, [[spoiler:after freeing several Level 6 Impel Down prisoners]]. Although, it seems one of his new crewmembers may have this.
* ComboPlatterPowers: Not only is he MadeOfIron and capable of wielding the anti-gravity powers of the Dark-Dark Fruit, [[spoiler:but he can also absorb other Devil Fruit Powers. He uses this particular ability to access the powers of the late Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit.]]
* CrazyEnoughToWork: His overarching plan to confront Whitebeard, and steal his Devil Fruit power to conquer his territory was grand, ambitious and truly bold. So how was he to do it? Well, capture Luffy - who had just beaten a Warlord and is the son of the world's most dangerous man. This later became more crazy when he decided that turning in Ace was better -- a trusted commander of the fleet of the strongest pirate alive who is ''fiercely protective'' of his "children", ''and'' the son of the late Pirate King. Given that Teach at this time had no bounty, and was traveling on basically a mast strung together by rope; this plan seemed completely idiotic. But he caught Ace and got a Warlord position from it. Yet, he still needed strong crewmembers to overthrow Whitebeard - So his plan was to break ''into'' Impel Down: The world's worst prison,which is likely to be heavily fortified in anticipation of Ace's public execution. Since Luffy did most of the chaos, ''it works'', and they even together bring down Whitebeard, and took over his territories.
* CurbstompBattle: In spite of all the power he wields and the threat level that he was shown to pose, he ''still'' [[spoiler: lost badly to Whitebeard with very little effort on Whitebeard's part (a Whitebeard that was about one step away from death, to boot) and would have been killed if his crew hadn't stepped in to save his ass]].
** He also delivers one to the [[spoiler: remnants of the Whitebeard Pirates AND their allies, who were out for his blood due to the war, Thatch, Ace and Whitebeard's deaths; which ended in a complete rout of his former allies. It cemented [[KlingonPromotion his promotion to the Four Emperors, essentially taking Whitebeard's place.]]]]
* DamageSpongeBoss: Considering how his Devil Fruit actually draws attacks towards him and [[spoiler: after he's taken direct hits from Whitebeard of all people]] he still can stand and fight without much trouble, it speaks volumes about his levels of endurance. Then again, he needs it with a Devil Fruit like that.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: In spite of every trait described about him making him a completely immoral and ruthless man [[spoiler: [[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130703113906/onepiece/images/d/dd/Marshall_D._Teach_as_Child.png this drawing by Oda for an idea of what the Warlords were like as children]] implies that he's not as simply evil as we thought him to be. And out of all of them, he's the only one looking miserable, meaning he must've suffered a great deal before he became the way he is now]]
* DarkIsEvil: He even went out of his way to claim his darkness powers are the most evil of all Devil Fruits. Considering he can completely nullify other Devil Fruit powers, there might be more to this claim than it being a simple boast...
* DecliningPromotion: Despite being as strong as one of Whitebeard's commanders, Blackbeard turns down the opportunity to become one, saying that 'he didn't have that ambition'. In truth, he did it to remain an unknown among Whitebeard's crew until he was ready to take the world by storm.
* DirtyCoward: Surprising, given how he carries the Will of D. and yet faces death with cowardice. [[spoiler: When Whitebeard is about to kill him, he has the audacity to cry about Whitebeard killing his own son. This is right after Teach mocked him and killed his subordinates. He then adds on by wimpering and cowering before him.]]
* DishingOutDirt: He now posseses the [[spoiler: Tremor-Tremor Fruit, he can make earthquakes and destroy or change entire landscapes]].
* DressedToPlunder: He's one of the characters who best represents the stereotype of the pirate: it helps that he's based off of the real-life Blackbeard. His ugly face is like the "brute" type of pirate and he wears a bandana since the beginning. While he mostly averts it in his first appearance, following his joining of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, he starts wearing a trenchcoat and a bicorn hat over his bandana, which become even more luxurious after he becomes an Emperor.
* DrunkOnTheDarkSide: He's always been a LargeHam, but when [[spoiler:he gets the powers of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit]] he goes full-blast into this trope.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Before we ever learn his name, Teach is met in a bar acting just like Luffy in their reactions to the pie and drinks in said bar. The chief difference is their opinion on what's good and bad are opposite, a subtle hint that Blackbeard is one of Luffy's {{Evil Counterpart}}s.
* EvilCounterpart: Another one for Luffy, and also the best fit for the trope. In addition, the rest of his crew also shadow other members of Straw Hats.
** Just take a look at Teach's Black Hole stance--it's almost ''picture-perfect'' for Gear Second's stance, save for the open palm as opposed to closed fist. Now, contrast the black "smoke" of the Yami Yami no Mi to the white steam that comes off of Luffy. If this doesn't set off some parallel alarms, nothing's gonna.
** This becomes even more clear with [[spoiler:the addition of Shiliew who, being a master swordsman]], is a pretty obvious shadow of Zoro.
** Another similar trait is his own talent to get powerful pirates to join him. And at least in his original crew (if not necessarily his expanded one) EvilIsOneBigHappyFamily.
** As a parody of this trope, his parallels to Luffy even go down to ''their choice of food.'' Even the BigEater that he is, Luffy absolutely '''''detests''''' [[DoesNotLikeSpam cherry pie (or at least the one he had at the shop they were both at).]] Blackbeard, though? [[TrademarkFavoriteFood It's his favorite.]] He also apparently didn't like the same drink that Luffy enjoyed.
** Also both Blackbeard and Luffy were recognized by Shanks as having great potential; he saves Luffy's life at the cost of his own arm, and he warns Whitebeard to not let the powerful Ace tangle with Blackbeard.
** His name and appearance also parallel his former captain Whitebeard. This is best seen in his first full appearance post-timeskip, which has him framed similarly to how Whitebeard was framed in his first appearance. This, along with his usurping of Whitebeard's position, territories, and powers, cements Blackbeard as the evil version of Whitebeard.
* EvilLaugh: "Zehahahah" is pretty much the most common thing to come out of this guy's mouth, almost to the point of a VerbalTic.
* EvilOverlord: When he became one of the Four Emperors, he gained the territory, manpower and plain power to match, and he's definitely evil.
* EvilSoundsDeep: Courtesy of Creator/AkioOhtsuka, he has a rich, booming voice befitting of a pirate. Downplayed with his English voice, which was less deep and more [[GutturalGrowler guttural]], but still very pirate-like.
* ExactWords: When Ace asks him why he turned down the offer to become one of Whitebeard's commanders, he explains he didn't have the ambition to be one. While it seemed that he meant that he preferred to remain a laid-back, unmotivated pirate, in truth, he meant he had ''[[AmbitionIsEvil much]] [[TakeOverTheWorld grander]]'' ambitions than being a mere commander for Whitebeard.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Subverted. One of the biggest indicators that he ''isn't'' a true inheritor of the mysterious "Will of D" is that when he is in immediate life-threatening danger and has a legitimate chance of dying, he starts begging for his life like the DirtyCoward that he is.
* TheFatalist: This is his crew's central motif and belief. He also believes that fate plays heavily to his plans - see XanatosSpeedChess below.
* FatBastard: He has a noticeable gut, and is very much an asshole. For bonus points, Whitebeard flat-out calls him this in the Funimation dub in the most scathing voice possible.
* FauxAffablyEvil: He'll appear friendly at first, but then he could quickly switch to mocking and killing people in a heartbeat. All while still wearing the same smile.
* {{Foil}}: He is the complete opposite to Luffy in more ways than one:
** Teach is a really big, fat {{Gonk}}. Luffy is a short and leanly muscular {{Bishounen}}.
** Teach, for all his bravado, is a DirtyCoward deep down and [[ItsAllAboutMe he cares only about himself]]. Luffy would give his live for his friends without a second thought.
** Their Devil Fruit powers also notable contrast each other. Teach's Dark Dark Fruit is a Logia without the NighInvulnerability that normaly comes with this kind of DF type and its abilities possibly make Teach even more vulnerable against physical damage. Luffy's Gum Gum Fruit on the other hand gave him enhanced vulnerability against physical (blunt) damage, something rather rare for a Paramecia type. Teach powers also work mostly by contraction while Luffy's powers work by expansion.
** Teach is JerkAss, a ManipulativeBastard and plays XanatosSpeedChess. Luffy is NiceGuy, a BadLiar and prefers a LeeroyJenkins approach.
** Teach loves cherry pies, Luffy detests these.
* ForWantOfANail: Everything that happened that lead to him becoming an Emperor was connected to his killing of Thatch and capture of Ace.
* FriendlyEnemy: For the most part, anyway. He had nothing but encouragement and praise for [[spoiler: Ace and, later, Luffy and Whitebeard.]] It's definitely one-sided, though, as all of them utterly despise him. On the other hand, he brutally dismissed Hannyabal's belief in the pursuit of justice while beating him down.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: From a GiantMook with no bounty to [[PsychoForHire Warlord of the Sea]] to an Emperor. It's practically an invoked trope by him; he let everyone think of him as a nobody in a deliberate ploy to make sure no one knew how ambitious his plans were until it was too late, even turning down a promotion as a commander under Whitebeard because secretly, his goal was much, much higher.
* GeniusBruiser: Doesn't seem like it at first, but he is a rather cunning planner. So much so that he's able to manipulate [[spoiler:the World Government, and use them to find new crew mates]].
* TheGhost: Becomes this after the TimeSkip. We frequently hear and/or see signs of his influence, but the only appearance he's made was a brief cameo [[spoiler: reacting to Luffy being declared an Emperor]], and even that was in silhouette.
* GiantMook: See AlmightyJanitor above. Because he kept his head down a lot, he served this role to Whitebeard instead. Until the Dark-Dark Fruit came along, that is.
* {{Gonk}}: For starters, he looks middle-aged, has missing teeth and usually puts a SlasherSmile.
* GravityMaster: One of the central powers of the Dark-Dark Fruit, and a staple of his attack pattern thus far.
* TheHeavy: The closest to one One Piece has due to its extensive use of [[ArcVillain Arc Villains]]. It's his actions that trigger the Marineford war, Ace and Whitebeard's deaths, the New Age of Piracy, and Luffy's decision to [[TimeSkip wait two years before entering the New World]]. Even after that, he's rapidly amassing power in the New World and has even come into conflict with Luffy's ''other'' brother due to Burgess's actions. Overall, Teach's presence has had more impact on the overall direction of the story than any other villain.
* HiddenDepths: From the first moment we see the guy, and before we even learn who he is, there's clearly something more to him than he appears at a glance. It's even more so when we learn that he gave Shanks (who had both arms then) a scar in a direct confrontation. And that was before Blackbeard had his devil fruit abilities. He may seem friendly, but he's almost never what he appears to be.
** SBS 82 reveals that one of his hobbies is Historical research... That alone leaves much to question considering the “Void Century”.
* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: He does this to Jewelry Bonney after he defeats her crew and captures her. Her response? A kick to the face, after which he expresses that's a very unlady-like thing to do.
* ImageSong: Got his own in ''Nippon Judan! 47 Cruise'' in the form of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzEKfFAbvNQ NOW MY HANDS GET!!!!]]".
* ItsAllAboutMe: To him, it doesn't matter how many died in the Paramount War, or from the various problems afterwards, [[spoiler:like a release of who knows how many evil Pirates from Level Six or the surge in new Pirates]], all directly or indirectly from his own actions. As long as he [[spoiler:becomes Pirate King]], it's all good.
* {{Jerkass}}: Hints of this are given in his fight with Ace, but he fully becomes one once he meets Luffy again.
* JustBetweenYouAndMe: Inverted. He doesn't tell you phases of his plans until ''after'' they played out. This is confirmed when [[TheChessmaster fellow schemer]] and predecessor Crocodile asks him why [[spoiler:he would throw away his Warlord title]] so soon, only for him to reply it's none of his business. He would later reveal that the only reason he had [[spoiler:the title in the first place is to break into Impel Down and take the world's worst criminals as his crewmembers, while his former captain prepares for battle with his former allies]].
* KarmaHoudini: He committed major atrocities over the course of the series (i.e. years of piracy and backstabbing, invading Drum Island, etc.) and somehow managed to ''not rack up a bounty.'' It gets even worse later on when he creates one of the greatest battles in history and walks away with everything he wanted without consequence. Of course, as he becomes one of the Four Emperors, it's likely that he'll get one. [[spoiler:He did. '''2.247 Billion berries''', to be exact.]]
* KickTheSonOfABitch: When he went to Impel Demon [[spoiler: to get a new crew]] he had the Level 6 prisoners [[spoiler:kill each other in order to find the remaining members for his crew]]. But, considering they're all unrepentant criminals who were implied to be rotten to the core...
* KlingonPromotion: [[spoiler:He became one of the Four Emperors by killing his predecessor Whitebeard. As we see further, it's not the murder of Whitebeard that cemented his seat, it was rather his conquering of Whitebeard's protectorates ''and'' staunchly defeating his former crew brutally, that gave him the official seat of the Four Emperors. ]]
* KnightOfCerebus: The tone of the story tends to get more dramatic and dangerous whenever he gets involved, case in point being he essentially set off the events of Marineford single-handedly.
* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Even if you [[spoiler:get Whitebeard's powers]], if you don't know much about it yet, like he has admitted to, it wouldn't do much against a guy [[spoiler:like Shanks]], not to mention Sengoku, the rest of the Warlords, the Admirals, and the rest of Whitebeard's crew. Probably why he wisely [[spoiler:withdrew from Marineford]].
** This happened again much later on when he attempted to make a prisoner trade with the World Government. After he noticed that they sent Akainu, he immediately called it off and got the hell out of there. He ''may'' have been able to take him, but when you're dealing with a homicidal maniac like Akainu who would be more than happy to wipe out your entire crew, you don't leave anything to chance.
* LargeAndInCharge: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. Although he is 11'3", he's not the biggest member of his crew. [[spoiler:Vasco Shot, who seems to be around the range of Kuma/Moria, i.e. 22 feet, towers over Blackbeard]]. And that's not even getting started on [[spoiler:San Juan Wolf, who looks to be as tall as the Sears Tower]].
* LargeHam: When he can get time to tell someone of his thoughts and plans, he explodes with it, like the quote above.
* MadeOfIron: It takes a lot to bring him down, and it's easy to do it, him being so slow. Too bad for him [[spoiler:Magellan exploited his weakness by flooding out his pain neuroceptors]].
* ManipulativeBastard: Notice how [[AffablyEvil he often talks to his enemies in a calm and friendly manner]]? That's to get ''someone's guard down'' before he attacks.
** And how he's been in wait during the whole [[spoiler:Paramount War]], but only reveals himself once both sides are very much weakened?
** Forcing [[spoiler:the inmates of Level Six to kill each other]] in order to get a chance to [[spoiler:escape as members of his crew can count]].
* ManOfKryptonite: To any Devil Fruit users. His powers don't work like seastone or a body of standing water though. These things weaken devil fruit users and prevent the conscious use of their powers on contact but they don't completely shut down the devil fruit abilities[[note]]Luffy for example is able to stretch underwater just fine[[/note]]. Teach on the other hand can turn off the devil fruit abilities of his adversaries entirely, but he has to do that willfully and it doesn't weaken the affected[[note]] as seen when Whitebeard grabbed Teach and tried to smash his head in with his full strength and devil fruit power[[/note]].
* MightyGlacier: Insanely durable and strong, powerful enough to [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom send Ace flying with a punch.]] He has also never been seen to actively dodge attacks, a fact [[BlessedWithSuck made worse by his fruit's powers,]] thus qualifying for this trope. This is not as troublesome for him though, thanks to his ability to [[YouWillNotEvadeMe pull enemy combatants to him.]]
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Someone who shares a name with the infamous RealLife pirate who may very well be ''the'' first name that comes to mind when the word is mentioned should've been a clue to his danger.
* NecessaryDrawback: His gravity powers can suck in Devil Fruit powers and drag opponents closer to him. They also subtly attract projectiles toward his body, making him reliant on his own toughness.
* NeverMyFault: Teach's own form of the Will of D involves subscribing to the idea of fate, that what will be will be, and was always meant to be so. In other words, in his eyes, every atrocity he commits in his quest for power simply is a work of fate, and there's no point in holding it against him in that it was "supposed to" happen.
* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: [[spoiler: Extracting a Devil Fruit from another Fruit user]] for his own use, as well as being able to survive [[spoiler: having two Devil Fruits]] in the first place, the latter of which is stated to be because of Blackbeard himself, not his Devil Fruit. The story implies there's more to this later, but he had already [[BeyondTheImpossible broken the established rules of the Devil Fruits]].
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: His invasion of Drum Island ousted its tyrannical king and liberated its people.
* NighInvulnerability: Subverted. Despite the Dark-Dark Fruit being a Logia-type, which had thus far featured this trope as a standard feature of its power-sets, its abilities actually make Teach ''more'' vulnerable to physical damage than normal. Of course, being an incredibly powerful individual as he is, he's still not easy to put down, despite this handicap.
* NinjaLooting: His standard MO, which is fitting since [[PersonalityPowers his main power is to draw everything into him]]. Why bother doing all sorts of hard work when you can let others do it for you then swoop in afterwards to take the fruits of their labor? He's done this so many times that everything he now has was stolen from someone else.
** He joined the Whitebeard Pirates hoping they would find the Dark-Dark Fruit for him, then murdered Thatch to take the fruit for himself. Post timeskip, he reuses this plan by finding Devil Fruit users to steal their powers.
** He decides to capture a big name pirate then hand them over to the Marines to boost his own reputation, rather than going committing many crimes in hopes of being noticed by the Marines and getting a high bounty. He targets Luffy at first but later settles on Ace.
** Instead of taking on Whitebeard and his crew himself, he lets them fight the Marines in a battle to the death, only stepping in once both sides are exhausted. In the aftermath of Whitebeard's death, he uses his knowledge from when he was a member to take over Whitebeard's territories.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Received one from [[spoiler: a very nearly dead Whitebeard that would have resulted in his death if his crew hadn't stepped in]].
* NothingPersonal: Says this about killing Thatch. He had nothing against him, it was just the only way to get his Devil Fruit. This is also his general attitude about Ace, Luffy, Whitebeard, and anyone else he screws over. While he ''did'' turn Ace in to the World Government, that was only because Ace refused his [[WeCanRuleTogether offer to join his crew]] and attacked him. And though he originally intended to capture Luffy and turn him instead, it was simply because of his bounty. Otherwise he encourages Luffy to follow his dreams and even wished him luck in rescuing Ace. As far as Whitebeard, he even admits that he admired him, it's just that he feels Whitebeard's time is over. Whitebeard however sees the murder of Thatch as a ''very'' personal insult.
* NotSoDifferent: Seems to think he and Luffy are on a similar level with their [[MightMakesRight powerful ambitions]] and huge dreams. Luffy seems to agree since he's very disturbed by Blackbeard's BlackAndGrayMorality and the implications it presents.
* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Someone ''really'' should have taken a closer look at this guy after he managed to give '''Shanks''' a permanent scar in a head-on clash, ''before'' eating his Devil Fruit.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: As a member of the Whitebeard Pirates, this guy took on Shanks and gave him three scars, and that was ''before'' he has eaten the Dark-Dark Fruit. After his betrayal, he defeats Ace, one of Whitebeard's division leaders, with little effort. ''Then'', through a combination of [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority strength]] and [[XanatosSpeedChess shrewd planning]], he assembled a [[BadassCrew crew]] from Impel Down, the most dangerous prison in the world, culminating in [[spoiler:killing Whitebeard '''and stealing his Devil Fruit power!''' (Did we mention that he's the ''only'' one known to combine two Devil Fruit powers and survive?) Put simply, there's a '''damn''' good reason he was able to replace Whitebeard as one of the Four Emperors.]] And this came from a guy who claimed that he didn't have that much ambition.
* ObviouslyEvil: He has a mouth filled with gaps for starters.
* OverarchingVillain: He spent several arcs (most of the time offscreen) planning to become a Pirate King, which involves recruiting powerful people to his pirate crew and, with his power, he obtains [[spoiler:Whitebeard]]'s fruit power and then takes over Whitebeard's position as one of the Four Emperors. And after the TimeSkip he has gained more fruit powers, and he has expanded his pirate crew into fleets.
* PerpetualSmiler: He's rarely seen without a smile on his face. The anime has him frown a bit when he and Luffy are arguing about having opposite tastes in food, and he momentarily loses his smile when he's terrified by the prospect of Whitebeard beating him to death (and Akainu coming after him on a warship), but otherwise, he's always smiling, even when clearly shouldn't be.
* PersonOfMassDestruction: His darkness powers can engulf half an island by himself, and now he's [[spoiler:stolen Whitebeard's power to create earthquakes and tsunamis]].
* PowerCopying: It seems that because of his own unique body structure, [[spoiler:he can absorb the powers of at least one other Devil Fruit from corpses, and he was after Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit power]]. Post-TimeSkip, he's said to be hunting after others to do the same to them.
* PowerNullifier: His power allows him to cancel the abilities of other Fruit users while he remains in contact with them. Unfortunately, as Whitebeard is all too happy to teach him, this does ''nothing'' to reduce the power of an unaided physical attack.
* PowerOfTheVoid: The Darkness can absorb anything into it, literally erasing it from our world. Of course, he can also expel it.
* PowerParasite: In the final stages of the Battle of Marineford, Blackbeard [[spoiler:steals Whitebeard's Devil Fruit]]. Post-timeskip he goes after even ''more''.
* PsychoRangers: His crew serves as this to the Straw Hats. To wit, there are similarities between Luffy and Blackbeard (similar belief in dreams, the Will of D, so on), Zoro and Shilliew (both master swordsmen), Chopper and Doc Q (doctors), Van Augur and Usopp (snipers), and Jesus Burgess and Franky (helmsmen, strongmen, etc.). The other members of the crew have not demonstrated their abilities much, but it's fairly likely that they will compliment the Straw Hats in some way as well.
* RagsToRoyalty: As much as "royalty" as being one of the Four Emperors goes, anyway; A drawing of him as a kid shows he used to be a sad street brat in his childhood, while now he enjoys the life in a pirate-like island.
* RousingSpeech: To the ''Straw Hats'' on their first meeting. He compliments them on sticking up to their beliefs and assures them that some fights aren't worth it with fools like Bellamy. It's enough to leave ''Luffy'' speechless.
* RuleOfSymbolism: His first name (Teach) was also the same for the RealLife version. Whitebeard's last name (Edward) was also the RealLife Blackbeard's first name. Thatch was an alias used by the real Blackbeard sometimes. [[spoiler:By killing them both and taking Whitebeard's powers, Blackbeard has truly become... Blackbeard]].
* ShockwaveClap: [[spoiler:The Quake Punch at a longer distance.]]
* SignificantWardrobeShift: His outfit gets fancier after he becomes a Warlord and once again after he captures Ace, to show that he's moving up in the world.
* SphereOfPower: [[spoiler:After stealing Whitebeard's Devil Fruit, he can also use the Quake Bubble now too.]]
* StoryBreakerPower: He has [[CastingAShadow Dark powers]] which turns him into a ManOfKryptonite, even if it comes with certain drawbacks. [[spoiler: Problem is, he then somehow managed to violate the established convention of having only 1 power per person, and took Whitebeard's Quake powers as his own, a StoryBreakerPower in its own right.]]
* StoutStrength: Is a very fat man, but incredibly strong and durable.
* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: One of the things that allowed him to slip under the radar despite being part of the Whitebeard Pirates for close to 20 years is that, in appearence and demeanor, Blackbeard seems no different from any run of the mill thug. This obscurses just what a dangerous, cunning and ambitious man he really is.
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Cherry pies. Every time we see him eating it's always cherry pies, with some ale to wash it down.
* {{Ubermensch}}: He rejects the increasing Pirate beliefs of not believing in the future, seeks to bring a New Age, is a firm believer in personal strength and morals (primarily dreams, in his case), is very charismatic, and incredibly good at [[TheChessmaster shaping the world to his will]].
* UnderestimatingBadassery: His initial plan at Marineford was to kill Whitebeard himself, having ''grossly'' overestimated how much of a toll that Whitebeard's illness and fatigue had taken on him. If Blackbeard's crew hadn't jumped in at the last minute, Whitebeard would have killed him effortlessly.
* UnintentionalBackupPlan: He was originally going to capture Luffy to try and get a position as a Warlord, but the Straw Hats got shot up into the sky when he approached them and then an even bigger fish -- Portgas D. Ace -- came right to his doorstep instead. Even better for him, both Luffy's Impel Down invasion and the Marineford War that directly ensued thanks to Ace's capture proved even better for his plans than what he originally had in mind (that is, to break into and out of Impel Down with new crewmates by himself and then attack Whitebeard on his own).
* WeCanRuleTogether: When Ace shows up to punish him for murdering his crewmate, Blackbeard offers to let him join his crew. Ace already isn't going for it, but when Blackbeard mentions that his plan involves turning Luffy over to the government, Ace gets straight to the fighting.
** In chapter 925, Blackbeard makes the same offer to [[spoiler: Moria, immediately ''after'' he just found out from Blackbeard's crew that they killed Absalom for his Clear-Clear Fruit ability.]]
* WolverineClaws: When he was a member of the Whitebeard Pirates, he used this kind of weapon. The [[AllThereInTheManual Vivre Card Vol. 6]] confirms that these claws were the cause of Shanks's eye scars.
* TheWorfEffect: Happens twice. First time was when he and his crew encounters Magellan, who doesn't even bother asking them just what the hell they are up to (considering that he's already dealing with a riot and a mass escape attempt that involves some ''incredibly'' dangerous people, that is probably the wisest course of action) and just floods all of them with poison, Blackbeard included, and the second time involves Whitebeard demonstrating just how many fucks he gives about Blackbeard's Devil Fruit by absolutely pulverizing him, and if it hasn't been for Blackbeard's crew stepping in in the latter case, he definitely would have been killed.
* WrongContextMagic: Both the Dark-Dark Fruit compared to other Logias, since they don't give the user intangibility and his ability to [[spoiler:possess multiple Devil Fruit powers, when it has previously been stated that if someone were to eat a second devil fruit, they would die]].
* XanatosSpeedChess: He claims to be playing Speed Chess; in his own words, he has a plan, but circumstances keep changing and he's adapting the plan to fit the bumps along the way. For example, he wasn't going to bother following his original plan to bring in Luffy for a bounty until Ace catch up with him. Once the plan is fully laid out, it looks a lot more like a Roulette with all of the things that went his way. Though a lot of that was probably just luck, and his fortunes may change in the future. Considering that he needs the Warlord position [[spoiler:to break into Impel Down and release the Level 6 prisoners eventually]], he has been probably planning to [[spoiler:confront Whitebeard at some point, anyway]]. Realizing that Ace is hounding him make things go even faster and [[GambitRoulette everything falling into place easier]].
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: His power covers the domain of GravityMaster, but his ''Kurouzu'' move is this, where he pulls his target into melee range. The worst part is there's no known way to defend against it, and once you're in contact, your power's gone and he can counter with his powerful melee attacks. You can counter while getting pulled, but good luck doing enough damage to fell a MightyGlacier like him, unless your name is [[WorldsStrongestMan Whitebeard.]]
[[/folder]]
----

* ImpossiblyDeliciousFood: [[spoiler:Luffy preventing her from eating the wedding cake at the Tea Party causes this to be her craving when her eating disorder kicks in. Since she's never tasted the cake, the food she's craving is a cake filled with all the fantasies of what it possibly could have tasted like -- a cake that is literally impossible to make for anyone short of the greatest chef in the world. Even with the aid of Pudding and Chiffon, the two people who specialized in what the cake supposed was to be (chocolate chiffon cake), the task still would have been impossible. Luckily for the Big Mom Pirates, Sanji, who ''is'' the greatest chef in the world (or at least close to it), was still present within their territory and fully capable of not only recreating the intended cake, but also making it taste even ''better''. ''Unfortunately'' for them, they had just tried to assassinate him and his family -- Sanji only got involved in the baking process because Big Mom rampaging would make the Straw Hats' escape even more difficult, especially after Perospero lied to Big Mom and claimed they had stolen the cake]].

* EvilSoundsDeep: Courtesy of Creator/AkioOhtsuka, he has a rich, booming voice befitting of a pirate. Downplayed with his English voice, which is less deep and more [[GutturalGrowler guttural]], but still very pirate-like.

* BadassGrandpa: ''72'' years old, but still capable of tearing an Admiral several new assholes while fighting the entire Marine at the same time.

*** Though to be fair, she is still completely confident that Luffy and the alliance have no chance of beating her either and states unequivocally she could have defeated Kaido, Shanks, and Whitebeard with the armies of Elbaf behind her so how she views Kaido is up for debate.

* ManOfKryptonite: To any Devil Fruit users. His powers don't work like seastone or a body of standing water though. These things weaken devil fruit users and prevent the conscious use of their powers on contact but they don't completely shut down the devil fruit abilities[[note]]Luffy for example is able to stretch underwater just fine[[/note]]. Teach on the other hand can turn off the devil fruit abilities of his adversaries entirely, but he has to do that willfully and it doesn't weaken the affected[[note]] as seen when Whitebeard grabbed Teach and tried to smash his head in with his full strength and devil fruit power[[/note]].

* NeverMyFault: Teach's own form of the Will of D involves subscribing to the idea of fate, that what will be will be, and was always meant to be so. In other words, in his eyes, every atrocity he commits in his quest for power simply is a work of fate, and there's no point in holding it against him in that it was "supposed to" happen.

* NighInvulnerability: Subverted. Despite the Dark-Dark Fruit being a Logia-type, which had thus far featured this trope as a standard feature of its power-sets, its abilities actually make Teach ''more'' vulnerable to physical damage than normal. Of course, being an incredibly powerful individual as he is, he's still not easy to put down, despite this handicap.

** His name and appearance also parallel his former captain Whitebeard. This is best seen in his first full appearance post-timeskip, which has him framed similarly to how Whitebeard was framed in his first appearance. This, along with his usurping Whitebeard's position, territories, and powers, cements Blackbeard as the evil version of Whitebeard.

** His name and appearance also parallel his former captain Whitebeard. This is best seen in his first full appearance post-timeskip, which has him framed similarly to how Whitebeard was framed in his first appearance, emphasizing Blackbeard's position as Whitebeard's evil replacement.

** His name and appearance also parallel his former captain Whitebeard. This is best seen in his first full appearance post-timeskip, which has him framed similarly to how Whitebeard was framed when he first appeared, emphasizing Blackbeard's position as Whitebeard's evil replacement.

** His name and appearance also parallel his former captain Whitebeard.

** Teach likes cherry pies, Luffy detests these.

* [[HeroicRROD Villainous R.R.O.D.]]: Big Mom's craving rampages make her an utter juggernaut that won't be stopped by anything. However, if she ends up spending an extensive period of time in her rampage, it does start to take its toll on her body. After about eight hours of chasing the Straw Hats nonstop, Big Mom has noticeably slimmed down and in Chapter 889, she collapsed onto her hands and knees with apparent exhaustion. Reuniting with Prometheus and Zeus has restored some of her stamina but the rampage has still made her look drastically different.

* AnimateInanimateObject: This is actually a power of hers. She can place pieces of people's souls within any object and bring it to life. The resulting entities are called Homies, and answer to her beck and call, effectively letting her know everything that happens in Totto Land and around it. This includes ''the weather itself''. The most powerful homies are made from her own soul fragments.
* AnArmAndALeg: Invoked by her. As dangerous as it is to be her subordinate, trying to leave her employ is even more so. Prior to Jimbei, nobody who has dared made it to see the next sunrise. Jimbei shows us why that is. Big Mom sees leaving her employ as losing a part of her army, and demands an "equal exchange". To decide that, she brings out a roulette wheel, or dartboard, with crudely-drawn body parts on it. Later reports claim Jimbei backed off, terrified of the "price." It's later made clear by Brulee that it's a sham, and the game is designed to kill whoever plays it. Jimbei's instincts were pretty spot-on. Even then he may have taken the risk, but he also realized the large numbers listed with the various penalties implied that she would also kill/maim a number of his comrades equal to those numbers.

* ArcVillain: Of the Whole Cake Island Arc.

* IntimidatingRevenueService: The fee to live in Totto Land under her protection is rather steep. In addition to the tithes of candy she demands, citizens must donate one month of their lifespan every six months (collected by Big Mom via her Devil Fruit power and used to create her "homies") or else they must leave.[[note]]For example, the average life expectancy of a normal human is seventy-eight years old. Apply Big Mom's fee, and that expectancy decreases to sixty-five years old -- ''thirteen years''.[[/note]]
* InterspeciesRomance: At least nine of her husbands were non-humans - a merman (who sired Prim and Praline), a fish-man (who sired De-Chat), three different Snakenecks (one fathering the quadruplets Mondée, Amande, Hachée and Effilée, one fathering the twins Mascarpone and Joscarpone, and one fathering Wiro), a Longarm (who fathered Mobile, Marble, Myukuru and Maple), a Longleg (who fathered Smoothie, Citron and Cinnamon), a Three-Eye (who fathered Pudding) and a Dwarf (who fathered Normande). Seeing as how she's ''obsessed'' with creating a nation of rare species, it's likely she [[ReallyGetsAround specifically seeks out men of these varied races]].

* MightyGlacier: While she mostly makes up for it by being TheJuggernaut, Linlin [[spoiler:even after slimming down]] is greatly lacking in speed compared to many others in the One Piece universe. She relies on her personal Homies to handle anything that requires quickness.

* NoSell: [[spoiler:Nami's powered-up [[ShockAndAwe Thunderbolt Tempo]] (for which she used Zeus as a conductor) '''''fails to even singe her''''']]

* StartOfDarkness: [[spoiler:It's heavily implied that Mother Carmel's sudden disappearance was hers. Big Mom was already a CreepyChild (albeit a sweet-hearted one) who would unintentionally cause destruction everywhere she went, but when Mother Carmel disappeared and she got raised by Streusen instead right afterwards, she turned into a ''monster'']].

* VillainTeamUp: Following the Straw Hats' escape from Totland, she attempts to gain Kaido's cooperation so that she can kill Luffy, invoking YouOweMe. Kaido isn't for it, saying that Luffy is his to kill and that their debt was from long ago.

* VillainousLegacy: [[spoiler:Of Mother Carmel. Everything that Big Mom is today was a result of Mother Carmel's influence and further shaped by Streusen's encouragement. It's also played with, in that it wasn't "The Mountain Witch" that inspired her villainy but rather the "Holy Mother" image that Carmel projected to hide her activities as a slave trader. The false ideals Carmel espoused are those that Big Mom took as her own, only to be twisted by her selfishness and cruelty, creating a pirate Emperor that continues to terrorize the seas ''decades'' after Carmel's passing]].

* TheNotableNumeral: They are collectively called "Four Emperors", or "Yonkou" in Japanese. In Japanese, the term "Yonkou" puts an emphasis that the emperor isn't the only one to be called like that and that they are three other people who share the same title.

* TheSouthpaw: He was left handed before the Sea King changed that. This is implied by Mihawk when he states that they used to duel each other with their swords, but it's become a thing of the past since Shanks has lost his good arm.

* BladeOnAStick: He wields a bisento even taller than he is.

* PapaWolf: Never kill or threaten to kill a member of his crew; his wrath over hurting his men is infamous in-universe. Unless you want a war, you have a high probability of losing... ''if'' you have the entire planet's military force backing you up. If not, it's a guarantee.

* ArchEnemy: To the Kozuki clan (well, [[spoiler:just Momonosuke]] at this point considering that Kaidou [[spoiler:killed his parents]]). He's also more than likely this to the Mink Tribe by virtue of one of his CoDragons, Jack, trashing Zou. He's also this to Gecko Moria for killing his beloved crew; when Moria was running Thriller Bark and created Oars, Kaido was his primary target.

*** Though to be fair she's still completely confident that Luffy and the alliance have no chance of beating her either and states unequivocally she could have defeated Kaido, Shanks, and Whitebeard with the armies of Elbaf behind her so how she views Kaido is up for debate.

* ForWantOfANail: Want to know what Linlin would be with better parental figures than Carmen and Streusen? [[spoiler: Post-Amnesia Linlin, when exposed to the kindness of O-Tsuru, became a ''gentle'', ''grateful'' and ''helpful'' person. The exact opposite of her current self. ]]

* MysteriesPast: Despite being one of the first characters introduced, Shanks's rise to power is some of the most mysterious aspects of One Piece's mythology with only mystifying tidbits to draw on. What's known is that he rised incredibly fast [[note]]Kaido, Big Mom and White Beard were Roger's contemporaries with territories of their own, Shanks was still fooling around in East Blue until 10 years ago[[/note]] without StoryBreakerPower. Yet he's well connected to the point that he can walk into Marie Geoise, talk to the Gorosei and walk out unharmed.

Amongst the original four, only Shanks and Whitebeard were seen to be benevolent, while Big Mom and Kaido were far more immoral and nefarious. Their bounties have not been revealed; with the exception of a past bounty issued to Big Mom (500,000,000 berries), no number has ever been given to let us fully grasp the danger they presently pose, but later developments suggest that they are among those whose bounties go up to at least ten figures — a level of bounty reserved for people whom the government and onlookers consider to be near-unstoppable monsters.

She holds the record for being the youngest person in the series to receive a bounty, gaining a 50,000,000 berry bounty at just ''six years old''. Her last known bounty after that (as an older child) was shown to be 500,000,000 berries, already considered more dangerous than most of the members of the Worst Generation.

** Teach is a really big, fat {{Gonk}}. Luffy is muscular {{Bishounen}} of average height.

The once-dreaded power of the Emperors has since been challenged by newer, bolder generations of pirates: Whitebeard lost his life in a WarArc with the Marines, and his killer, Blackbeard, officially replaced him over the course of the following year after he took over the former's territories and defeated the remnants of his crew; Linlin lost two of her ally ships to Kidd (another Supernova), who formed an alliance with Hawkins and Apoo (two more Supernovas) to bring down Red-Haired Shanks (only for their alliance to be attacked by Kaido, who inducted Apoo as an ally and captured and brutalized Kidd); Monkey D. Luffy (one more Supernova) publicly challenged Big Mom for authority over Fishman Island; and Trafalgar Law (both a Supernova ''and'' a former Warlord of the Sea), is actively working with Luffy to take down Kaido.

* FunctionalAddict: Despite being a raging alcoholic, he's managed to actively and effectively rule over Wano with an iron fist for over 20 years without interruption. It helps that he's ''way'' too stupidly strong for anybody to hurt him even when he's drunk, though. [[spoiler: Luffy learns this the hard way when he launches a barrage on a drunken Kaido, doing ''no'' damage and earning himself a OneHitKo for his troubles]].

* OneHitKo: [[spoiler: He effortlessly defeats a Gear Fourth Luffy in one blow from his mace, treating Luffy's most ''powerful'' form as a mild annoyance at best]].

* NoodleIncident: To this day, we ''still'' don't know what happened during the battle between Shanks and Blackbeard that would scar Shanks's left eye. All we do know is that whatever happened caused Shanks to be wary of Teach long before he gained any renown as a pirate -- which is why he warned Whitebeard against allowing Ace to continue going after him.

* WolverineClaws: When he was a member of the Whitebeard Pirates, he used this kind of weapon.