#Look I get it he has the swag of a mafia boss + the casino etc etc

[moongothic]

You know people often talk about how Crocodile is a "mafia boss who has tons of connections to other criminals in the underworld for running all his criminal businesses" and like

Does he???

Because like??? Yes, he did run ONE secret criminal organization, and he did need at least ONE connection to acquire the Dance Powder for causing the drought in Alabasta, but like

Crocodile's whole deal is that he doesn't trust anyone and thus he doesn't interact with anyone. Like his funny little criminal organization was functionally ran by Robin since she was the one doing All The Interacting and the Actual Working, Crocodile was just giving out orders for Robin to pass on (though yes people did know the Mysterious Mr 0 was The Real Boss of BW, not All Sunday). So to me it sounds so unlikely if he actually had like tons of personal connections, because surely he wouldn't actually trust anyone for doing any criminal business with them, right??

Not to mention, being an underground crime boss with a massive network is like. Doflamingo's thing. Like that is literally Doflamingo's whole deal, he was the one running a ton of criminal activies across the globe ranging from slavery and drugs to the SMILE production. So it'd just be weird if Crocodile was also meant to be a crime lord of similar caliber when at best he'd be a Budget Mingo. Like Doflamingo already occupies that role in the story, would we have needed two former Shichibukai to be crime lords?? (Yes you could argue Crocodile could've become Doflamingo 2 had he gotten away with his plans (and thus Doflamingo could've been like, a way for Oda to show what the Strawhats helped stop from happening to Alabasta), but again, his goal is and has always been to gain military power, so?? Why bother with dealing with other criminals??)

Like I just genuinely don't remember the idea that Crocodile has connections ever being brought up in canon? Like, I could be just forgetting something, but the closest thing I can remember was Chapter 1058 mentioning Cross Guild was "getting funding from shady organizations", but keep in mind, this is probably more due to Buggy's own fame than Crocodile's new involvement. Like Buggy's Delivery was already doing mercenary work all over the place, so while the mercenary work changed into marine hunting with different branding, it doesn't mean whatever connections Buggy already had made suddenly vanished, just that they now have more

And the one last thing is that like. In Punk Hazard we see Ceasar Clown show off his new weapon of mass destruction, Land of Death, to a ton of crime lords all over the world. Amongst the people there's plenty of randos we can't recognize, but then there were also Pekoms and Tamago, as well as Kid, just tuning in to the show. Considdering Crocodile is supposed to be interested in weapons of mass destruction (unless he lost interest in them), if he had any criminal connections then surely he would've also been amongst the people watching Ceasar's presentation, right? And if he was, surely Oda would've shown him to us, right?? But no, he's not there

So like???

Is there something I'm forgetting, some canon lore drop that does actually confirm Crocodile has tons of criminal connections???

Or is this just. Fanon that people don't realize is fanon?? Somekind of a fandom mandela effect??