Usopp’s Bounty at 30,000,000 Berries

This is the only wanted notice in the register issued in the name of a person who does not exist.

The portrait shows a masked man in a cape, and the poster identifies him as Sogeking, king of snipers, from Sniper Island. None of that is real. Sogeking was a disguise Usopp improvised in order to join the assault on Enies Lobby without having to revisit the argument that had made him quit the crew days earlier. The mask was supposed to last an afternoon. It lasted two years in the World Government's files.

Thirty million is not nothing, either: it is the exact figure of Luffy's first bounty. Sogeking earned it by shooting the World Government's flag off its pole from a rooftop, on his captain's order — the act that turned Enies Lobby from an extraction into a declaration of war.

The result is a remarkable piece of administration. The Marines opened a file, printed a face, set a rate and distributed all of it worldwide, for a character invented the previous day by a professional liar who happened to need an excuse.

Usopp has kept the ambiguity alive in both directions, which is entirely in character: Sogeking is a different man whenever it is safer not to be the wanted pirate, and he is Sogeking whenever there is an audience to impress. On one point, at least, the poster technically backed him up — it did not carry his name.

The best part is that the mask worked in both directions. While the Marines hunted a masked sniper from an imaginary island, Usopp moved around bare-faced and unwanted, in a world carrying his portrait on every wall.