 No matter how much you care about your comrades, no matter how much you defy me or try to thwart my plans, if you can't beat me now, then everything you'll have done was in vain because only those with true power can afford to have ideals. Hello and welcome to One Piece 101, the series that breaks down everyone and everything in the One Piece world. Today we are going to be examining one of the most popular antagonists in the long history of the series, Sir Crocodile. Sir Crocodile is a tall and broad man presenting a mafia boss-style aesthetic accompanied by a cigar at almost all times, as well as one hell of a large golden hook on his left hand. And this aesthetic is for good reason, as he is quite a powerful and influential figure within the world, possessing exceptional intelligence and always plotting towards some goal or another. In addition to this, Crocodile also happens to be incredibly arrogant, cold, calculative, cynical, and just a teeny bit sadistic. And with this glowing introduction, it may surprise you to find out that Crocodile was not always this way. And in fact, at one point in life, Crocodile's dream like many other characters in the series was to become the pirate king. In his more youthful days, Crocodile was even present in Logtown for the execution of the former pirate king, Goldie Roger, the moment that sparked the great age of piracy. And so Crocodile set out to make his dream come true, even managing to make it into the new world. However, over the years, Crocodile very much lost sight of his initial drive, instead becoming increasingly obsessed with chasing power. Although to be fair, he would be quite successful in this endeavor, as during his sprightly mid-20s, Crocodile became one of the seven warlords of the sea. This time, Crocodile sitting at peak confidence also went on to challenge Edward Newgate, better known as Whitebeard, and even better known as the strongest man in the world. And as you can probably gather, things didn't go too well for Mr. Crocodile, and not only did Whitebeard defeat and humiliate him, but he also left Crocodile's trademark facial scar, which serves as an eternal reminder of his failure to achieve his ambitions. And it was after this moment that Crocodile completely abandoned his quest to become the pirate king, seeing it as an impossible task. But this did not break him completely, and he did begin pursuing other hobbies, such as finding ancient weapons and starting civil wars. You know, the usual stuff. And for these two purposes, he would go on to create an underground organization named Baroque Works, which at the height of its power, contained over 2,000 members, and was so secretive that the large majority of its members had no idea who they were truly working for. Knowing Crocodile, only by the mysterious alias of Mr. Zero. One of the few members who did know Crocodile's true identity was his second in command, Nika Robin, also known as Miss All Sunday. Although despite being his partner within the organization for several years, Crocodile never developed any sort of relationship with her beyond his general sense of permanent distrust, which was probably for the best because Robin was more or less using him for her own purposes as well. And speaking of, I should mention that the entire reason why Crocodile partnered up with Robin was because she could read the ancient language, which was key to Crocodile's new goal in life, which was finding and wielding the ancient weapon Pluton. As part of his plot, he needed to locate and decipher a ponyglyph located on the designation of alabaster, and to do so, he artificially conjured a civil war through various devious means and took advantage of the chaos to force King Nefertari Cobra to take him to the ponyglyph. Although not before being challenged by our protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat, who were recruited by Nefertari Vivi, the princess of alabaster, in order to defeat him. As a result, Crocodile would go on to face Luffy on three separate occasions, and each time he showed us that he is just as physically devastating as he is mentally. This was primarily due to Crocodile's devil fruit, the sooner, sooner known me. A low-gear-type fruit that allows him to conjure, manipulate, and become sand. And of course, fighting on a desert nation, this made him more or less invincible, managing to defeat and nearly kill the Straw Hat captain twice. However, this is where Crocodile's more sadistic side would come back to bite him, as on both occasions, he left Luffy to die a slow death, wanting him to suffer, and well, on both occasions, Luffy would miraculously survive, leading to a third bout by which time Crocodile's weakness had become apparent. You see, rather annoyingly, all an opponent really needs to nullify Crocodile's low-gear powers is water, something that Luffy was able to figure out, and he proceeded to use his own blood to finally defeat Crocodile. Although I don't think that summer gives Crocodile quite enough credit, because he was strong enough to take many, many, many hits from Luffy, as well as creative enough to have various nefarious means of turning the tide of battle in his favor, such as a poisonous hook under his golden hook, and even a knife under his poisonous hook under his golden hook. And that sort of thing really does sum up Crocodile quite well. He's the kind of person who has backup plans for his backup plans, and were it not for his own arrogance, he may very well have succeeded in locating Pluton and gone on to cause untold destruction within the world, but he didn't, and instead he was promptly arrested by the Marines, as well as stripped of his title as a warlord of the sea. Following this, Crocodile was imprisoned, along with several of his former employees in a cover story entitled Miss Golden Week's Operation, Meet Baroque Works. And at the climax of the story, Crocodile was even given the opportunity to break out of prison. However, he and his loyal agent, Darth Bones, better known as Mr. One, decided to stay behind for reasons, and they would go on to be transferred to the world's most secure prison in Peltdown. Now, being the dangerous mofo that he is, Crocodile was placed in the secret level six portion of the prison, a space reserved for the world's most dangerous criminals. And during Crocodile's time here, we'd learn a couple of little things about him, such as the fact that he's far more durable than we would have originally thought, as he was one of the rare prisoners to undergo the sterilizing baptism of hell's hot tub without so much as flinching, as well as the fact that he is one of the even rarer individuals in the world, who was completely unaffected by the beauty of Boa Hancock. However, soon enough, an opportunity would present itself to Crocodile in the most unlikely of faces. As Monkey D. Luffy broke into the prison in order to rescue his brother, podcastie Ace. And despite being former enemies, Crocodile eagerly joined forces with Luffy and the rest of his accumulating jailbreak squad and proved absolutely invaluable in their escape from Peltdown. From here, the prisoners sailed to Marineford, the headquarters of the Marine organization and the location currently being besieged by another of Crocodile's old foes, the Emperor Whitebeard. And after trying and failing once again to kill Whitebeard, Crocodile and Dustbones found themselves in the midst of a war and protecting their one-time enemy, Luffy. In this effort, Crocodile traded blows with many of the most infamous combatants in the series, including the world's greatest swordsman, Drake Yumi Hawk, as well as Admiral Arcaynu. In fact, Crocodile once again played an absolutely integral part in Luffy being able to escape Marineford, although exactly what prompted this sudden change of heart can only be speculated upon. In any case, Crocodile did also manage to survive the Paramount War, and not only that, but he appears to have gained a new lust for life, immediately planning on entering the new world once more and inviting Dustbones to come along with him. As for exactly what the two have gotten up to since is a mystery at the time of this recording, but they have been active in the new world for the past two years. Although Crocodile has only made brief appearances in the series, reacting to Luffy's exploits following Dressrosa and Hulkay Kylind. Some more fun facts about Crocodile. While Crocodile's reasoning for not accepting Miss Goldenweak's offer of escape was never specifically stated, it may be due to the fact that he had lost all interest in the world, until the idea of taking revenge on Whitebeard piqued his interest once more. Crocodile's dream of becoming the pirate king was only actually revealed during the Baroque Works cover story. After Miss Goldenweak invoked her rainbow color trap ability, which allowed everyone to, very superficially I should say, become what they'd always wanted to be. At the time of his introduction, Crocodile's bounty was frozen at 81 million berries, which is extraordinarily low for a wallet of the sea, bearing the exceptions of Boa Hancock, Buggy the Clown and Blackbeard. Although it has been noted by Oda that had the world government known that he was the head of Baroque Works, then it would have at least doubled to 162 million berries. Crocodile, or more specifically his hook, has been subject to varying continuity errors in both the manga and the anime, having been depicted with two hands and no hook on several occasions. Whilst not clear at the time of this recording, Crocodile also appears to have a history with the revolutionary Emporio Evenkov, as during the Impel Down Arc, Evenkov even threatened to reveal one of Crocodile's secrets. And finally, a truly useless fact, Crocodile's least favorite food is crocodile meat. Which I don't know, seems fairly reasonable actually. It's like me saying that my least favorite food is eating myself. Oh, and Crocodile also hates tomatoes. Once again, I will agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. But that pretty much does it for Crocodile. 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