Portgas D. Ace
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Very little screen time. VERY popular character. He's the sixth most popular character in the fifth and latest official popularity poll.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- During his cover story, he hilariously blows his cover by punching the daylights out of a Marine who talked smack about Whitebeard. That quirk gets him again in Marineford, with heartbreaking results; when Akainu mocks Whitebeard as a failure, Ace fights him, and gets killed as a result.
- Ace's debut scene, sans a flashback a few episodes back, shows him falling asleep while eating, but the proprietor of the bar thinks he's dead and Hilarity Ensues... And then he became the first character in One Piece to die outside of flashbacks.
- Reviewing Ace's Alabasta Arc scenes and seeing him act cheerfully, some audiences consider his childhood and read him as a Stepford Smiler.
- News of his death came shortly (within days) after Funimation released the first dub episodes of the Alabasta arc on their site. Said arc featured him as a Guest-Star Party Member for a few episodes. It makes things unsettling.
- Jerkass Woobie: When he was a kid. Sure, he had a damn good reason for it, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he left a young Luffy to fend for himself in the forest. Even more so since Luffy just wanted to be his friend. He becomes better as an adult, where he becomes a full-blown Woobie beneath all that laid-backness. He basically spent his whole life thinking about whether or not he deserved to be born.
Marco
- Ensemble Dark Horse: He was placed twelfth in the fifth character poll, beating three Straw Hats and his own captain.
