Crocodile Dont-You-Recognize-Me Reveal Prior-Meeting Tease

Status: pending · Technique: dialogue-tell + ambiguous-backstory-hint

The seed

Forward-canon ambiguous — Oda’s Don’t you recognize me? is the precise register of a we’ve-met-before tell. Could read as:
- (a) Crocodile is implying a literal prior encounter with Vivi (or her father, Cobra) — possibly pre-Warlord, possibly under another identity.
- (b) Crocodile is meta-implying that Vivi should recognize him as the sand-source the moment he sand-impersonates — a goading taunt rather than a literal prior-encounter tell.
The I’ve lost a little weight phrase is the chapter’s strongest evidence-for-(a) — body-weight change implies the character had a physical form Vivi knew well enough to compare.
Pre-loads a Crocodile-pre-Warlord-near-the-royal-family backstory that may or may not cash in the arc.