 So here's a fun fact. There is official femme croque art in existence because Oda once drew all of the original warlords' gender swap. However, the most concerning is actually Doh Femingo, who is saying as sincerely as possible, it's time for the cake buffet to begin chilling stuff. Hello and welcome to the ground line reviewer source for everything one piece. And today I mean that much more so the most days because my name is Liam and this is going to be probably the strangest video I've ever made. Because I would like to present, well if you a brief history of the most bizarre left turn that one piece fans have ever made. So if you've been active in any online one piece community for probably any amount of time, you may have stumbled across the term croco-mal and chances are you've heard it in jest, but the term refers to the very basic, yet potentially disturbing idea that crocodile is Luffy's mother, which sounds completely absurd and meme-y and if you do see the idea brought up these days and it is usually done so in that context. However, it is my duty as an unofficial one piece story and to inform you that there was indeed a time where this thought was taken very seriously by some, and I gotta caveat that by some, definitely not others, but a very big quantity of some. I mean, we've been through some pretty weird times as a fan base, such as the equally as serious movement during Dressrosa, which insisted that Meadows was Kido in a fancy leopard disguise or during Holgwick Island where thrifty Bob and Hypnosis was going to be the key to defeating Big Mom. At least that's what everyone online told me because otherwise why would Oda make such a big deal about introducing him? And then there's currently Raging Theory on Wano that Zoro is going to be the one to kill Kido and that even has a fancy abbreviation, ZKK or ZKK, if you're of an American persuasion, you're wrong though, doesn't matter though because these ideas all belong in the same box of embarrassing toys that we never play with anymore. However, if there was one crack thought that we as a fan base do keep on full display in a beautiful glass case with all sorts of funky lighting, it is definitely Krokomom. So prepare yourself because this is a pretty wild ride. And we're going to strap ourselves in with a quick round of Crocodile Rock, a very simple minigame, the rules of which are as follows. Behind one of these three rocks is lurking a sinister crocodile, behind the others are filthy, filthy alligators. And it is going to be your job to guess which rock this croc is hiding behind. Should you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, which will also result in consistent injections of one piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. And if you are correct, then you yourself will become a crocodile, lucky you. So which will it be? Is the crocodile hiding behind rock A, B, or the other one? Make your choice now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it is rock A, which I notice is very sneaky because crocodile starts with a C. But if you guess correctly, then you know the thing to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet, welcome. Now to even begin comprehending the madness that is croco mom, we need to discuss Luffy because this thought didn't simply spawn one day. There was quite a lot of buildup to this mess of a theory and a lot of it has to do with the eternal speculation of who is Luffy's mother? Probably one of the most unimportant grand scheme of things questions, to be honest with you. But there is an intriguing phenomenon that occurs in pretty much all fan bases actually, where potential family connections are treated as paramount future world-shaking events. When in the reality of at least this series, they are often far more mundane and tokenized existences. Great example of this would be Ace's mother, Rue. She appears in all of, I think, five panels and four of them are on a single page, which is why if someone tells me that Luffy's mother must be highly relevant because his father is just such an important character in the world, I'm just like, look, Ace's father was literally the pirate king and we didn't get much from that. So if Luffy's mother ever is revealed, that's how I personally expect things to unfold, Oda just confirming that yes, she did indeed exist and here's what she looks like. And as far as we know, Oda himself has no grand plan with Luffy's mother either. In fact, he's been specifically asked about this to which he answered, I think she's alive. I've been thinking hard about this, ha ha ha, laughter. But if she does appear in the story, then she'll be a very tough looking woman and strict. There's no way she's a beautiful mother. She's got this typical middle-aged woman's permed hair. Although what's really fascinating about this is that this interview was conducted in 2009 just prior to the proper introduction of Dadan, a character who matches Oda's description of Luffy's mother pretty much perfectly. Strict, tough, middle-aged woman with permed hair. Look at all that permed hair. It could not be more permed. So I think it's fairly safe to say that Dadan is what Oda had in mind here, but that still leaves the lingering question of biological parentage, something many fans are utterly obsessed with. Meanwhile, Oda himself doesn't particularly care. In fact, one of the major themes of One Piece is that true family bonds don't need to involve blood relation at all. And that's why biological parents are more often than not irrelevant in the lives of our main characters. There's a few exceptions like Niko Alvia and Usopp's mother, but by and large, it's a very neglected feature. Purposely so, I should say. Essential narrative themes aside, the main takeaway here is that there was and always will be, to some degree, a ravenous lust for knowledge regarding the person who pushed Luffy out of their genitals. So that's one important side of this croco-mom coin. The other side is the man whose very existence completely changed the discourse of One Piece, Emporio Evenkov. I maintain that no singular character has had a greater impact on the fan base because his devil fruit makes the concept of gender-swapping canon, a factor that usually remains quite exclusive to fan art and cosplaying and other fan bases. It opens up a whole new world of pretty much infinite possibilities, but the one that really caught people's eye was crocodile. And this is due entirely to a conversation between Ivankov and crocodile during Empel Down. In chapter 540, it's established that these two have a history. And Ivankov claims that if he, meaning crocodile tries anything funny, I'll fix him. Mm-hmm, I know his weakness. To which crocodile's reaction could best be described as a man with his balls locked in a vice, startled and trapped. So he becomes very cooperative as a result and it did not take long at all like we're talking less than 24 hours after this chapter's release before the entirety of the One Piece based internet came to the conclusion that crocodile could have originally been a woman because there's very little of substance elsewhere to latch on to. I remember my personal interpretation of this scene at the time, which was that Ivankov knew about crocodile's weakness against water, thus meaning that Ivankov could deal with him easily if necessary. But I should say that this is the official English translation that I've quoted and that almost certainly was not how Ivankov's statement was worded in the scans at the time. In fact, I quite vividly remember this line being translated as Ivankov knowing crocodile's secret or something along those lines, which still does fit with the water theory. However, the word secret is how shall we say more salacious than the word weakness. Whatever the case, the idea of femme croque blew up and I mean really blew up. The fact that we're still talking about it to this day very much proves that. So the fan base began gathering additional pieces of evidence to support the concept. One of which is the idea that the original Seven Warlords took heavy inspiration from the Seven Heroes, a group of rather ironically named villains in a game called Romancing Saga 2 released in 1993. And whilst this has never been confirmed, the core similarities between our characters are actually pretty striking. Among the Seven Heroes, there is a swordsman who follows a strict code of conduct, a puppet master skilled in manipulation, a sea creature human hybrid who can control ocean life, a modified cyborg, a woman whose primary skill lies in temptation, a demon who can create zombies. Then finally there's this. This thing is named Wagnus and his goal is to quite literally find an ancient weapon to control a country. So does that sound like anyone we may or may not know? The similarities are definitely there. It would be a pretty wild coincidence for two separate groups of seven characters to be created in isolation and sharing these features. However, the Crocomon party takes this a step further with the idea that Wagnus, despite being male, is depicted with a female body due to his crazy assimilation techniques. And the leap from here is to apply this concept to Crocodile. The idea that he may have been a man trapped in a woman's body, come across Ivankov and one poke of a hormone fruit later, is now the maniacal madman that he has always dreamed of being. Yes, it is a big stretch, but proponents of the sort will often cite in series evidence as well. One primary piece is that we actually have an image of Crocodile as a child, along with the other original warlords and Blackbeard. And the argument here is that compared to the others, Crocodile is actually depicted as quite androgynous. He doesn't seem to have the trademark out of characteristics often given to young boys, like a scruffy appearance, absurd determination, or a fun loving nature. If anything, Crocodile is far closer to resembling a young boa hancock than his male counterparts. Legit, put this young croc in a dress and look, we'd probably buy it. Quick side note though, I'd also like to point out that Dolph Lamingo was smoking at the age of like, what, he must be under 10 or something here. But at some stage in his life, he clearly quit because I don't think he's ever been shown smoking as an adult, which is intriguing, but you know, tangent over. Have you ever wondered why we call Crocodile, sir, Crocodile? As far as we know, there's no knighting system on this planet. Certainly not one that a pirate could gain access to anyway, but this is a very distinct indicator of maleness. So the thought is that Crocodile insists on calling himself, sir, to avoid any possible confusion. The plot thickens. And the next wonderful piece of evidence is actually, it's non-evidence, but it's Crocodile's cameo in chapter zero of the series, which is a shot of him from behind. No face and no body. So this has naturally been adopted by this segment of the fan base as, ooh, Oda is going so far to hide Crocodile's gender here. Isn't that interesting? Fam croc, confirm. And the way I've just said that probably sounds like I'm making fun of the idea, but well, actually, we have something far more substantive in Crocodile's entry for the one piece of your card data book. Crocodile's card makes very specific mention of this whole Ivankov issue, stating he's got a weakness when it comes to his past that he can't oppose. He definitely owes something that Ivankov gave to him. And I just, I mean, that legitimately left me mind blown when I read that. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Fam croc may be one of the most credible theories in the entire one piece fan base. It's definitely far from confirmed, but that entry is absolutely wild because what else could Ivankov have given him? And why would that be a weakness of his past? Questions, so many questions, but this is no longer purely a meme based idea. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Fam croc is very, very credible, but as credible as it may be, how do we make that leap from Fam croc to Croco mom? Well, there are a fair few different quote unquote explanations out there, but all of them seem to involve the same general starting place. Being that Crocodile has a clear connection to Emporio Ivankov, they have a confirmed history at this point, which means that it is not the biggest leap in the world to suggest that Crocodile could have encountered dragon because Ivankov is a high ranking member of the revolutionary army after all. And you know, one night after perhaps one too many revolutionary wines, Crocodile and dragon hooked up, resulting nine months later in a baby Luffy. And I just need to say, this is the most reasonable and straightforward explanation I've heard. They get weirder, they get much weirder. In fact, I'm going to read one verbatim from a Reddit thread posted four years ago by a user named JTBasketball. I don't know if this is serious or just trolling, but it was a very, very long thread and it ultimately concluded with this. Another popular fact to bring up is that Ivankov is calling him Crocodile Boy. The only people he calls boy are Luffy and Crocodile. Just immediate side note, that's not actually true. Ivankov does that with Bonclet as well. He is Bon Boy, but I digress. Why would he do this to Crocodile who is 46 years old? The theory gets the most credibility when combined with another. All right, secondary immediate side note. Hmm, I don't know. Is it a good sign when the credibility of your theory is based entirely on the outcome of another theory? I don't know. The theory is that Crocodile hooked up with Ivankov or an Okama. Calling him Crocodile Boy is a reminder to his regretful sexual encounter many years ago. How does this tie into him being a woman? Ivankov turned him into a woman after reacting negatively towards learning about hooking up with a dude. During this time as a woman, she met dragon and conceived Luffy. If you are still with me up until this point and sure not, I guess we've come this far, you know that Luffy's parents are dragon and Crocodile and his grandparents are garb and whitebeard. Luffy has the most powerful family tree in history. It just is all up right there. All of the other insanity aside, the instant addition of whitebeard into this mix did confuse the hell out of me. But earlier on in this, this very, very long post, there is a link to, you guessed it, another theory that Crocodile is the biological son of whitebeard. I'm not getting into that one here. I'd just like to point it out to further emphasize that what I've read is a complete amalgamation of other theories and I'm pretty sure that if you are basing a theory on fan theories, then at that point, it is technically classified as fan fiction. But the thing that really gets me is how round about it is. Like it's not good enough for Crocodile to have had an encounter with dragon. Instead, what needs to happen is a regretful night of passion with Ivankov, after which point Crocodile was transformed and only then could this lead the way into the loving yet windy arms of drag. Whatever the case, it's easy to brush this off as a meme perpetuated by fun, one piece trolls especially these days. However, I guarantee you that there was a point in our history where there was a concerningly large proportion of the online speaking fans, legitimately considering Crocodile as a key possibility for the future of one piece. But all of this is only allowed to exist because of two factors. One, the overwhelming yet arguably unnecessary desire to understand biological parentage in this goofy pirate comic. And two, the legitimately credible concept of Femcroc. Without the foundation crafted by these two pillars, thoughts of Crocodile could never properly take flight and perhaps that would have been for the best. But look, we're here now and let's just be glad that nobody, I hope, is seriously considering the idea of Goldi Momger. But if you did want to theorize about Roger in particular, then do check out this video which asks the all important question of whether or not the pirate king once possessed a devil fruit. Very intriguing stuff. So I look forward to seeing you there.