Top 10 Worst Death Fake-Outs In One Piece

 One Piece's author Eiichiro Oda has a talent for writing tragic and tear-jerking death scenes... which is why it's more than a little disappointing that many of those deaths don't actually stick. Characters seemingly die, only to turn up alive, thus ruining their supposed death scenes and making us doubt the legitimacy of later character deaths. This list will rank the top 10 worst cases of these.

The entries on the list will be rated according to the following criteria.

• The quality of the death scene. The more tragic the death, the more disappointing it will be if it turns out to be fake.
• The impact on the narrative. If a character's death would have been meaningful for the story, then it ranks higher. More important characters tend to rank higher.
• The improbability of the character's survival. Often, it's never explained how a character could have survived their peril.
• How pointless the revival was. Somewhat counter-intuitively, an example will rate higher if the character plays no further role after their survival, since it means that there was no point in bringing them back.

Now for the list.

10.Charlotte Moscato

You may not remember who he is, since I had to look it up. He's the 16th son and 25th child of Charlotte "Big Mom" Linlin, and the Minister of Gelato... as well as someone who gets his soul ripped out when trying to calm Big Mom down during one of her hunger-fueled rampages. This scene establishes that Big Mom is an unstoppable force when she's hungry and has no qualms about killing her own children... but it's undercut when he turns up alive. He ranks low on the list because of how forgettable he is, so his survival doesn't have as much impact on the story.

9.Bellamy

Introduced in Jaya, Bellamy was a small-time thug with a bounty of 55 million Berries- nearly twice that of Luffy's first bounty, but below Luffy and Zoro's post-Alabasta bounties. As a result, he feels confident bullying Luffy, and learns the hard way that he was holding back when Luffy comes to get revenge for a friend.

Bellamy's boss, Donquixote Doflamingo, then the pirate with the highest known bounty in the series, is rather annoyed that his underling Bellamy embarrassed him, and ends up controlling Bellamy's right-hand man Sarquiss and forcing him to kill Bellamy. That said, Bellamy ends up surviving, and returns to Doflamingo's service a changed man, undermining an early showing of Doflamingo's ruthlessness.

Despite this, Bellamy's survival wasn't all bad, since he undergoes a surprisingly good redemption arc and comes off as more interesting than the one-note punching bag for Luffy he was in Jaya.

8.Mr. 9 and Miss Monday

This one's a double-entry of two characters who "die" at practically the same time, for the same reasons and come back at the same time.

When Vivi and Igaram infiltrated Baroque Works, they weren't paired together, like most teams of male number agents and female partners, but instead got these respective agents as their partners. Their partners were left in the dark about their true missions, and learned the truth at the same time the readers did. Nevertheless, Mr. 9 valued Vivi as a partner and Miss Monday also considered her a friend, so they both attacked the much stronger Mr. 5 to secure her escape, only to be taken down by Mr. 5's explosions. One could assume that they died, but they ended up showing up on a post-timeskip cover page series, years after the end of the Baroque Works saga.

While they were rather minor characters, it ended undermining Mr. 5's brief showing as an actually competent and ruthless villain. Of course, Mr. 5 ended up being inadvertently defeated when Zoro and Luffy paused their fight to prevent him and Miss Valentine's Day from interfering, and also went down rather easily on Little Garden. That said, their survival is rather easy to miss, since they only show up alive on one cover page(as opposed to another entry, who's an important part of another cover series), meaning that anime-only watchers may not know that they survived. Because of this, they're ranked fairly low.

7.Igaram

Also from the Whiskey Peak arc, Igaram, realizing that Vivi is in danger, agrees to take the Eternal Pose to Alabasta and disguise as Vivi (remember that he's an overweight middle-aged man while Vivi is a slim teenage girl). No sooner does he leave than his ship explodes, apparently the result of Nico Robin, aka Miss All Sunday, blowing it up.

Near the climax of the Alabasta arc, Igaram shows up in the kingdom, having inexplicably obtained a ship and made it all the way there by himself. He ends up playing a crucial role in ending the rebellion by revealing that the "king" who attacked Nanohana was actually an imposter, and saving the child who saw Bon Clay's true form.

The reason he isn't higher on this list is because it makes sense that Robin, who had already betrayed Crocodile by saving Luffy and would do so again by lying to him about the Poneglyph, would spare one of his enemies to undermine his plot. Additionally, he still had a role to play in the story, unlike other characters.

6.Mr. 2 Bon Clay(Alabasta)

Yes, there's a character who managed this feat not once but twice.

At the end of the Alabasta arc, Luffy and the other Straw Hats fled the country, pursued by the Marines. Bon Clay, having come to consider Luffy a friend, served as a decoy and stayed behind to fight Hina's crew. It was a fight he had no hope of winning, so he apparently died in the process... but as you ca guess from his other entry on the list, he survives.

Perhaps the worst part is that while he could have survived due to Hina taking him alive, since her Devil Fruit power is uniquely suited to capturing people, he inexplicably escaped, returned in the Baroque Works cover story, ended up getting captured and was sent to Impel Down, making the entire affair pointless. That said, he, along with the captured Baroque Works officers, returned to play a role in Impel Down.

5.Mr 2. Bon Clay(Impel Down)

Bon Clay reunites with Luffy in Impel Down, and helps him on several occasions. After succumbing to fear and fleeing from Magellan, the deadly warden of the prison, Bon Clay goes back for Luffy, who fought Magellan and lost, and brings him to the one person who can save him.

As the Straw Hats are preparing to escape, Bon Clay stays behind to help secure their escape route, ending up face to face with a furious Magellan. Bon Clay not only broke out of his prison cell, but helped organize the largest jailbreak from Impel Down, but while Magellan has killed prisoners for less, Bon Clay isn't afraid. Inexplicably, he survives and remains in Impel Down.

While there is a possible explanation for this- Blackbeard and his crew showing up and defeating Magellan before he could kill Bon Clay- this would require rather precise timing. Besides, it doesn't make sense for Blackbeard to help Bon Clay, or to just leave him around after defeating Magellan. His survival makes less sense than the first time, but it's only revealed on a cover page, so he isn't as bad as the rest of the top five.

4.Pagaya

This one's another character you may not remember- he's the father of Conis, a young woman the Straw Hats met on Angel Beach in Skypiea. As the final act of the arc begins, Conis and Pagaya find a man who reveals that Eneru is planning on destroying Skypiea and using an airship to travel to the "Endless Varse." Eneru then attacks the location with a massive bolt of lightning, and Pagaya shoves Conis out of the way, saving her and allowing her to warn the other Skypieans.

Naturally, the drama surrounding his death gets undermined when he turns up alive at the end of the arc. Even worse, since he's just an ordinary civilian, he has no abilities that would allow him to survive such a blast, unlike Luffy's rubber body.

3.Pound

Pound is one of Big Mom's many husbands. Not long after Big Mom gave birth to twin girls, Lola and Chiffon, she decided Pound was no longer useful and abandoned him. Luffy, Nami, Chopper and Carrot find him in the forests near Big Mom's castle on Whole Cake Island.

As the Straw Hats try to escape, Pound shows up again, and helps protect Chiffon, who has decided to betray her mother to help her husband and his allies, the Straw Hats. After Pound stops Oven from cooking Sanji and Chiffon alive, Oven turns on Pound and kills him, with Pound calmly accepting his fate. Most tragically of all, neither Chiffon nor Lola recognize him as their father.

Like with Mr. 9 and Miss Monday, Pound shows up alive in a cover story, although his role is significantly larger. He finds Chiffon and Lola, who have reunited after many years, and reveals himself as their father. It's a heartwarming family reunion, but it cheapens the meaning of his sacrifice. Worse, one could imagine that Pedro, who'd performed a suicide bombing on Perospero during the same arc, may not have actually died.

This is probably one of the worst examples due to it being rather improbable that Oven would fail to kill Pound, but it doesn't have as much of a narrative impact as the top two.

2.Sabo

For the most part, the rule "No one dies in One Piece" has an obvious exception- flashbacks. It's almost required for every flashback of an important character to involve at least one character dying in that flashback.

As such, one might be surprised when Sabo inexplicably survived a Celestial Dragon ship firing on and destroying his boat, neither drowning nor being killed in the blast. His death during his desperate attempt to escape from his aristocratic parents had a deep impact on his "brothers" Ace and Luffy, causing them to resolve to be free. Instead, Sabo turns up again in Dressrosa and successfully claims Ace's Flame Flame Fruit, taking up Ace's mantle in more ways than one, and thus supporting many fans' perception of him as a poor replacement for Ace. Part of the backlash is because people don't like how he survived, and part is because people don't want him around, period.

As of this writing, it has been implied that something happened to Sabo while he was infiltrating the Reverie, but that still doesn't change the fact that he survived what should have killed him. If, however, he survives yet again, he'll likely have another entry under his belt.

Before we get to the top pick, here are some (dis)honorable mentions. Once again, they aren't necessarily just below the tenth-ranked entry but I felt they were worth mentioning.

Dishonorable Mention: Kanjuro

Kanjuro had the dubious honor of being supposedly killed offscreen by his former comrades in the Red Scabbards. Later in the battle for Onigashima, he turns up disguised as Oden, and manages to take down both Ashura-doji and Kikunojo before Kin'emon cuts him down.

I decided not to include him on the list because while his actual death comes off as a bit anticlimactic after the fakeout, I disliked his fake "death" so much that I ended up having mixed feelings about the entire development.

Dishonorable Mention: Doctor Hogback

Late in the Thriller Bark arc, Doctor Hogback is supposedly killed when Oars, the massive zombie he helped create, smashes the room he's in. Nevertheless, he turns up alive at the end of the arc.

His survival is somewhat contrived, but didn't make the list because as a thoroughly despicable adversary, there's not much sympathy to be had for his death.

1. Pell

Now here's perhaps the most infamous example, not to mention one that paved the way for others to come.

In the climax of the Alabasta arc, Vivi is racing to stop Crocodile from detonating a massive bomb in the capital city of Alubarna, one supposedly able to level the entire city. After preventing the bomb from being fired, Vivi tries to disarm it, but realizes it's on a timer. As she despairs, her loyal bodyguard Pell flies in, and after declaring that serving the Nefertari family has been the greatest honor of his life, flies far into the sky with the bomb. He manages to get the bomb far enough away from the city that its detonation causes no harm to anyone, but is caught in the blast radius and is presumed dead.

Everyone assumes that Pell is dead, although his fellow warrior Chaka finds himself unable to cry for his death- one could assume that Chaka doesn't think he's dead, or that Chaka believes grieving for Pell would disrespect his honorable end. But then, in a hospital in the desert, a patient insists on leaving despite his wounds... and the doctor stops him to give him back a familiar-looking headdress, revealing Pell lived.

To me, this is the worst example for a few reasons. It's easily the least probable survival, since there's no realistic way for Pell to get the bomb to a safe distance from the city and then get to a safe distance from the bomb. It also robs the arc of a bittersweet ending by giving a face to the countless people who died in the rebellion; as Cobra says, the country lost much and gained nothing in the civil war. Likewise, the story also lost much and gained nothing by Oda failing to kill off Pell, which paved the way to other characters surviving their apparent deaths.

Conclusion

Oda's tendency to go back on character deaths in One Piece not only undermines the impact of their individual deaths, but has become a bad habit that makes it harder to accept that other characters are dead. After all, how can we be sure that Pedro didn't survive his heroic sacrifice when Pound survived his? At this point, the damage has been done, and all we can do going forward is hope Oda is less willing to use this trope in the future.