Top 10 Running Gags in One Piece

For what is probably a morbid insight into Brook's declining mental state after being alone for decades after the death of his crew, Brook always puts attention that he is dead by what he calls skull jokes.

He will say something like, "The food tastes so good, my face is going to fall off." Followed by, "Oh, I don't have a face to begin with." or "I can't stop my nose from bleeding. Wait, I don't have any nose."

What really makes this joke is how funny Brook thinks the jokes are. Usually, they are accompanied by his very loud and proud laughter. "Yohohohoho."

Every time Usopp is too scared to do something that Luffy or the group is forcing him to do, Usopp will come up with a disease that would excuse him from further adventuring. It is usually in the variation of the dreaded Must-Not-Get-On-This-Island Disease.

The Straw Hats are so mean. What if it's terminal? They would feel pretty bad if something happens to Usopp.

Because Usopp is becoming more and more the brave warrior of the sea as time goes on, this running gag is being featured less and less. Here's hoping it would come back soon.

Eiichiro Oda always makes sure that every eccentric character and villain the Straw Hats encounter throughout their journey always has a signature laugh. By now, with One Piece's long length, the many signature laughters produced are spanning on the hundreds.

From Gecko Moria's Kishishishishi. To Big Mom's Mamamama. To our own Brook's Yohohohohoho.

When they are a villain, and they laugh their hearts out, it makes us want to punch them along with their horrible acts. When it is a good person laughing, their laughter is endearing, and it makes them all the more jovial and friendly. In either case, it is always funny. Even if we know most One Piece characters have a weird laugh, it is always infectious.

While Zoro and Sanji did fight from time to time in their early adventures, it is only after they visit Little Garden that this running gag is truly born. In that arc, Zorro and Sanji are in competition to see which one will capture the bigger food. The next time this joke returns to prominence is when they are participating in the Davy Back fight, as they keep on fighting each other while also needing to work together.

Since then, Zoro and Sanji are always fighting. What's funny about their rivalry, is that there does not seem to be any reason why they are always at each other's throats. They just don't like each other with no real explanation.

We hope there is no explanation to the very end, so as not to ruin the joke.

Zoro may be able to slice through mountains with a swing of a sword, but nothing will stop Zoro from being lost that he needed to slice the mountain in the first place. Even when all he needs to do is follow a straight path, he will still end up going the wrong way. What makes it funnier is when someone calls him out on his lack of sense of direction, he is very defensive about it and will deny that it is his fault.

Somehow it makes this badass lone wolf more relatable.

Maybe it is due to Nico Robin's harsh childhood, but she grows up to have such a morbid imagination. Every time there is something that happens to one of her crew members, she will comment in deadpan the darkest things.

When they were in Skypiea and Zoro is dragged to a sea made of clouds, she comments that if Zoro is already dead, the clouds should be colored red. When the Straw Hats are brainstorming names for their brand new ship, she wanted to call it Being of Darkness. When a small monkey passed through the Straw Hats in a blur, she thought it might be a bloody person with knives stuck all over its body.

Luffy may one day be king of the pirates, but that does not mean he will have social boundaries with the friends he met along the way.

Every time Luffy meets a strange creature, his natural knack for curiosity will always make him ask if they can poop, only for one of the Straw Hats to tell him not to ask such a blunt question. Hilariously, the person he is asking will tell him that they do. If Luffy pushes the topic more, they might even tell him how.

This whole joke started when Luffy saw Brook for the first time and invited him as part of the Straw Hat crew. At the time, we do not know it yet, but Brook would end up really stepping foot into the Thousand Sunny, even if he doesn't have any feet.

But so no one would realize that Brook is a serious contender as a Straw Hat, Oda repeats the joke later in Thriller Bark. When Brook finally does join the crew, the joke does not retire as Luffy still keeps on inviting weird creatures into the crew.

The biggest laugh for this running gag is when Luffy saw a Zombie Unicorn and Zombie Tree having a drink together. Once he gets a hold of them, he tries to recruit them for the crew.

It did not happen but think about the endless possibilities if they accepted. Zombie Tree and Unicorn would have tragically disappeared along with the rest of the Straw Hats in Sabaody Archipelago. Then we get to see how strong they have become after two years of training. The possibilities are endless.

Buggy the Clown is one of the funniest characters in One Piece in a list of hilarious characters, but he is also one of the weakest Pirate Captains given that he is an early villain.

The funniest Buggy the Clown running gag is that his strength as a pirate is always overinflated by other pirates who think he is at the same level as the most powerful pirates in the series. They treat him like a god, despite most of them in reality, being deadlier pirates than Buggy and having higher bounties than him. Buggy arguably has the ability to produce just as many followers as Luffy himself.

After the time skip, it took a long time until we get to see Buggy again. It also took us a long time to get a complete roster of the new lineup of Shichibukai. It turns out, Buggy's legend became so vast across the seas, that he is now a part of the Shichibukai with thousands of followers. He even has a strong arms business that rivals Doflamingo's. One day he might even become a Yonko. A Pirate King, why not?

When Luffy and Zoro got their first bounty, the joke was that Sanji was jealous that he does not have any bounty despite being as strong as them. A few adventures more, Sanji is continuously unrecognized by the government while Luffy and Zoro's reputation keeps on getting stronger.

When Sanji and the entire crew finally have their bounties, it is funny that it is only Sanji that does not have a picture. Instead, it is a bad sketch drawing of his face.

For a few adventures more, it is only then that the government gives his bounty poster his real likeness, but his face is still captured in a bad light. And instead of his poster reading "Dead or Alive," his bounty only counts if he is dead.

After encountering The Big Mom Pirates, Sanji is finally happy that his bounty is higher than Zoro's while now also saying "Dead or Alive." Then he is instantly sucked out of his good mood when he saw the name reading, "Vinsmoke Sanji." This means that the only reason that his bounty is so high now is that the government realized he is part of the infamous Vinsmoke family, instead of being recognized for his own achievements.

May every Sanji bounty reveal that follows after to be just as funny.