Tropes A to B (Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole, Arc Villain, Berserk Button, Beware the Silly Ones, Big Brother Instinct, Bowdlerise, Break the Cutie) | Tropes C to D (Call-Back, Chekhov's Gun, Cliffhanger, Combat Pragmatist, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Curb-Stomp Battle, Dark and Troubled Past, Deconstructed Character Archetype) | Tropes E to F (Early Installment Weirdness, Famous Last Words, Foreshadowing) | Tropes G to J (Heart is an Awesome Power, Hypocrite) | Tropes K to M (Laser-Guided Karma, Logical Weakness, Mass "Oh, Crap!", Moral Myopia, Muscles Are Meaningless) | Tropes N to P (Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, Oh, Crap!, O.O.C. Is Serious Business) | Tropes Q to S (The Reveal, Shout-Out, Spanner in the Works, Superpower Lottery) | Tropes T to Z (Wham Episode, Wham Line)
One Piece lives and breathes this trope. Many a villain is introduced as an apparently harmless weirdo who does things such as accidentally hypnotizing himself more than once, humorously disagreeing with the protagonist about the taste of a pie or just plain looking and/or talking funny. A few chapters later they turn out to be truly dangerous, usually without losing any of their silliness.
- Pretty much all Straw Hats can qualify as this, especially after the Time Skip. They might be one of the most eccentric pirate crews in the world, but they're also one of the most powerful and legendary ones as well, having trounced several Warlords of the Sea and living to see another day after screwing with Emperors and ruining their plans.
- The Captain Luffy may appear like a clueless idiot who only likes to eat meat, but should you cross him, it won't be pleasant for you and your entire scheme and he won't stop until you're ruined. Gear 5 makes this literal. There is no power in the world more ridiculous, but Nika is still the God of Freedom; in this form he both utterly trashed Kaido and made a joke out of him in the process.
- Cowardly Lion Usopp will pull the most ridiculous tricks he can to avoid actually fighting, yet will eagerly snipe you from across an entire country if you prove a threat to the crew.
- Chopper is a silly little bipedal deer known for freaking out in battle, but he's also one of the more clever Straw Hats and created chemical mixtures that can give him much bigger, stronger and muscular forms that he can combine with some tinkering.
- Sanji won't hit women, and is a pervert that nosebleeds all the time, but God help you if you waste food or hurt a woman in front of him: The man kicks hard enough to set people on fire from the friction alone.
- Zoro inverts the order by being their fearsome Master Swordsman who has cut down countless pirates, but later showing he's a Comically Serious tight-ass and so directionally impaired he'd get lost in a straight hallway.
- Brook is a perverted skeleton with a giant afro more eager to joke around fight, but he will cut you down faster than the eye can see and without you even noticing until You Are Already Dead... and he'll probably crack a skeleton joke right out of a Halloween joke book to add insult to injury.
- Franky is the most bombastic cyborg you might ever see and guides himself more by Rule of Cool than anything else, but he's still a cyborg made by a man smart enough to rebuild himself after a train crash, and capable enough to make a Wave-Motion Gun powered by soda that can still put a lethal hole even in armored vessels.
- Some of the Devil Fruit powers people have are also ridiculous in premise but incredibly strong in the hands of those who wield them. This includes:
- Kaku, who, with the Ox-Ox Fruit: Model Giraffe, has the power to turn into a giraffe. Initially, no one takes him seriously — not his opponents, and not his fellow assassins. But as he is already an accomplished martial artist, he uses his giraffe's long limbs for additional reach and force; and once he transforms, he begins with a kick so strong it tears off the upper floors of the building he's in, and he proves to be just as big of a threat as he claims to be.
- On top of this, there's Kaku's "Pasta Machine", a "technique" that happened entirely on accident when he attempted to extend his neck, and instead ended up extending his arms and legs. It later shows that this improves his reach, thereby improving his swordsmanship, turning it into one of the biggest I Meant to Do That moments in the series.Zoro (in the English dub): "Don't act like you did that on purpose!"
- On top of this, there's Kaku's "Pasta Machine", a "technique" that happened entirely on accident when he attempted to extend his neck, and instead ended up extending his arms and legs. It later shows that this improves his reach, thereby improving his swordsmanship, turning it into one of the biggest I Meant to Do That moments in the series.
- Giolla uses her Art-Art Fruit to spontaneously create whatever new art piece she wants by transforming things into her cubist style. This soon reveals itself to be a Story-Breaker Power, because whatever weapons she transforms loses their effectiveness in battle, and any people she transforms loses all of their Devil Fruit powers and fighting skill they might have had. This soon ventures into horror as she can also take said transformed people and merge them with other transformed objects, upon which they'll lose consciousness in a few hours and die shortly afterwards. She keeps a collection of artistic corpses as her private collection.
- Diamante, whose Ripple-Ripple Fruit powers allows him to cause anything in physical contact with him to ripple like a sheet of fabric. To start, he wears a sheet of steel like a cape, allowing him to block most attacks. He can also use this power to store a large amount of weaponry on himself, including a series of flattened cannons that shoot confetti... only that said confetti is actually spiked balls that revert in midair and rain pain down all around him.
- Most of the Big Mom pirates have abilities that revolve around food, and all of them are exactly as dangerous as you would expect from the elite soldiers of one of the Four Emperors.
- Charlotte Cracker has the power of the Biscuit-Biscuit Fruit, which allows him to generate an unlimited amount of biscuits. Nothing states that his biscuits have to sustain a normal, expected biscuit shape, however, and Cracker uses this power to create a never-ending, always-regenerating personal army of humanlike biscuit constructs to do his fighting for him.
- Charlotte Galette has power over butter, which she uses to easily defeat and restrain Nami.
- Charlotte Katakuri can generate mochi, which allows him to imitate all of Luffy's techniques except better, among other things. This, combined with his mastery of Observation Haki, makes him Big Mom's strongest subordinate, and earns him a bounty of over 1 billion berries.
- Baron Tamago ate the Egg-Egg Fruit, which allows him to split open like an egg if he takes what is otherwise a lethal cutting or blunt force attack, and he reincarnates as a chicken. The chicken form, however, is stronger and faster than his base form (who is already incredibly strong to begin with), creating a nasty surprise to anyone who fights Tamago and thinks they have the upper hand. Worse even, he has a rooster form beyond that, complete with cock-a-doodle-dooing, that is even stronger; enemies who could keep up with the chicken form tend to call it quits before it even comes to facing this one.
- Kaku, who, with the Ox-Ox Fruit: Model Giraffe, has the power to turn into a giraffe. Initially, no one takes him seriously — not his opponents, and not his fellow assassins. But as he is already an accomplished martial artist, he uses his giraffe's long limbs for additional reach and force; and once he transforms, he begins with a kick so strong it tears off the upper floors of the building he's in, and he proves to be just as big of a threat as he claims to be.
- Kumadori is one of the sillier and more comedic members of CP9, as seen when he offers to commit Seppuku at the drop of a hat to take responsibilities for his comrades' mistakes or transgressions, only for him to reflexively activate Iron Body, thus preventing the knife from making a scratch. However, he's still a government assassin, and outmatches and nearly kills Nami before Chopper saves her. He then has the upper hand for most of the fight with Chopper, with Chopper's Arm Point being the only proven way for Chopper to break through Kumadori's Iron Body, and Chopper only defeats Kumadori by using Monster Point.
- Fukurou, also a member of the CP9, is prone to running his mouth despite having a zipper on it, often revealing information that is nothing but detrimental to his team. He is also strong enough to fight Franky with little effort until Franky gets at full power with his cola.
- Spandam, the CP9 leader, is a weakling who spills coffee on himself. However, his weakness is a blessing to everyone else, as the few times he gets the upper hand, he is one of the most ruthless characters in the whole story, not to mention pointlessly cruel as well.
- Queen, one of Kaido's Lead Performers, is positively comedic compared to King and Jack, but this is a World of Badass, and you don't get a one billion bounty just by being silly. Having the power of a Brachiosaurus doesn't hurt, either, as Sanji learned while fighting him, and had to utilize a distraction to defeat him.
- Kaido is mostly drunk and rants eagerly about his desire to wage war on the rest of the world, but once he gets sober, he reminds you why he's feared across the world. Luffy learned it first-hand, getting casually one-shotted in full Gear Four by a single swing of his kanabo. Luffy only managed to beat him in the end by becoming even more ridiculous than Kaido.
