Everyone knows that Shanks is one of the best characters in Oda's One Piece series. And even though Shanks's backstory hasn't been fully revealed yet, recent events in the series are slowly building toward some big revelations about one of the franchise's best and most popular characters. But this article will dig a little deeper into Shanks's past and the scene in which Shanks seemingly visited the Five Elders and had a conversation with them. This moment, the implications of which have apparently been clarified recently, was a major moment at the time, and it changed the way many fans perceived Shanks. In fact, the perception changed so much that he became known as "Shanks D. Snitch," and in this article, we'll explain the meaning behind this meme.

"Shanks D. Snitch" is a One Piece meme depicting Shanks as a snitch for the World Government. The name itself is a play on the Will of D, an important aspect of lore, and the fact that Shanks was perceived as a snitch after supposedly meeting the Five Elders. He was then perceived as a World Noble and a traitor, but recent events in the manga have seemingly proven that it was not Shanks who met the Five Elders, but rather someone close to him, a member of the Knights of God and the Figarland family.

The remainder of this article will focus on Shanks and his relationship with the Five Elders and the World Government in general, a relationship that has led to his being renamed "Shanks D. Snitch." Our main objective in this article is to determine whether Shanks could be a World Government snitch, as previously hinted, and how this nickname came about. If you're not familiar with the full story of One Piece, we must warn you that there are spoilers in the following paragraphs.

"Shanks D. Snitch" was a funny meme, but it turned out to be just a meme and nothing more.

And while he's well-known and one of the show's most popular characters, Shanks is also one of the show's most mysterious characters. Of course, we know about his life as a pirate and the fact that he's one of the show's most powerful characters, but much of his past still remains a mystery, which has allowed fans to come up with various stories and theories. One of them, which seems to have been recently disproven, was that Shanks is actually a World Noble and an ally of the World Government.

But how did this theory come to be? There's a specific moment in history tied to this theory. The moment we're talking about here is Shanks's supposedly mysterious and unexplained encounter with the Five Elders. As fans know, it's highly unusual for a pirate to encounter the Five Elders in this manner, especially because they seem to show great respect for Shanks, even though he's a Yonko and, therefore, their mortal enemy.

And while everyone and their aunts at the time thought it was indeed Shanks, it's worth noting that Shanks was, in this panel, depicted without his trademark scar. Of course, Oda himself stated that he would forget his scar from time to time, but the physical resemblance remained uncanny. It's also worth noting that the Five Elders never called Shanks by name in this scene.

Now, we know that Shanks is a very mysterious character, and although he has been an ally of Luffy and the pirates in general, it has been found that some of his actions are not always… simple and could be interpreted differently; this is a good thing in terms of character development, but it makes our job all the more difficult.

And while we were mulling over Shanks' alliances, the fandom did its own thing, and here's what appeared out of nowhere:

This is a fake panel, but it became an increasingly popular interpretation at the time. The panel shows Shanks, dressed as a World Noble, and his crew using certain characters as slaves. Someone used a real panel and simply altered it to show Shanks instead of the original character and also added Shanks' crew in the background. This was the fandom's reaction to Shanks possibly being a World Noble.

As you can see, Shanks has been "renamed" Shanks D. Snitch and has been identified as a Celestial Dragon (World Noble) and a puppet of the Gorosei (Five Elders). The name itself is a play on tradition, as the D., which is used to represent D.'s will, reads the same as "the," so the actual name is supposed to be Shanks the Snitch, but the D. was used as a play on the manga's story. But is Shanks a snitch?

Well, the above meme is more or less a thing of the past, but Shanks' role in the story has been debated for a long time, even more so when a silhouette of the Knights of God appeared, showing a character whose silhouette remarkably resembled Shanks. But as it turned out later, this probably isn't Shanks.

The Knights of God are an elite unit of the World Government and they are led by Garling FIgarland, a World Noble, the former ruler of God Valley and apparently Shanks's close relative. Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that Shanks is related to the Figarland family, and with all the differences we mentioned above, the guy may look like Shanks was actually a relative and not Shanks himself (so – no scars), which would mean Shanks is not a snitch. Still, the meme itself was pretty awesome.