Rocks was first mentioned in Chapter 907 of One Piece by the legendary Marine, Garp, when he was talking to Hina and other younger Marines. According to Garp, Rocks’ Age existed before the time of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger.

What’s more, Garp paralleled Rocks with an unstoppable force, which made it clear that he was easily among the strongest characters in the story. But according to Sengoku, Rocks is no longer alive.

This could be a lie considering that all the information about the God Valley incident is either hidden or manipulated and Sengoku is effectively addressing a room full of marines when he is talking about Rocks. It makes sense that he would stick with the established narrative that the whole world knows about Rocks being dead.

But I think Rocks is alive and actually the man marked by flames and my proof is his Jolly Roger.

We know that every pirate crews Jolly Roger reflects the captain in some way. Luffy’s has a skull with a Straw Hat on it, Kid Pirates has skull with Kid’s hair and glasses on it, Kuja Pirates has a skull with snakes coming out of it, Blackbeard’s has three skulls and for some reason Rocks Pirates has a skull that is on fire.

What does this have to do with Rocks ? I think he might actually be the man marked by flames and the lurking legend that Oda has talked about.

Rocks could have survived the God Valley incident and gone into hiding after his defeat. The world Government just decided to tell everyone that Rocks died or maybe Garp and Roger were the ones who spread that false story for some reason. Since we didn’t get the whole story in this chapter it’s possible that the fight between Garp, Roger and Rocks ended in some unexpected way with Rocks actually surviving.

I don’t know if I believe that Garp and Roger killed Rocks because it doesn’t really make sense that they would do that considering what the Celestial Dragons were doing at God Valley and the kind of people Garp and Roger are. Wouldn’t they be more concerned with saving civilians from the Celestial Dragons than fighting Rocks who was also there to attack the Celestial Dragons and steal their treasure?

Rocks would have inadvertently been helping them out by attacking the God Knights, giving the good guys a chance to save the innocent civilians.

Another reason why I think Rocks is the man marked by flames is because we were finally getting to the God Valley incident flashback and Oda had the perfect opportunity to introduce us to Rocks and he didn’t even get to say a single line in the latest chapter. And then suddenly the flashback was over, as if Oda was saving the reveal of Rocks for another time.

We get confirmation that all these big named characters are in his crew but not a word from the man himself?

I fully believe Rocks is the man marked by flames after seeing his Jolly Roger and that he is still alive in the One Piece world.

Two questions arise:

Why has Rocks not shown up in all this time?

It’s possible the battle with Roger and Garp crippled rocks to the point that he can’t physically attack the marines anymore. Either that or the betrayal of his crew crushed his ambition.

Would it be possible for the Gods Knights to be the ones to kill Rocks?

I doubt it since the fight has always been said to be between Roger, Garp and Rocks so it would be dumb to suddenly say that the God Knights were involved in it as well.

One final thing to state is that originally when we first got shown the Rocks Pirates Jolly Roger it looks much different that now. Below is a side by side comparison.

While in the initial reveal it looks like devil horns, in the latest chapter there is almost no doubt that it is a skull engulfed in flames. This could be to drive the point home that Rocks is the man marked by flames and there is also the possibility that Rocks is Lunarian given his Jolly Roger.

I mean, Rocks wanted to be King of the world and the only Lunarian we know of in the story so far is named King. Hmmm, pretty sus.

Finally, one more interesting thing I noticed in this chapter was the paneling which almost confirmed this for me.

The panel basically shows “ROC” when Rocks Jolly Roger appears. As in “Red Roc”? Luffy’s attack which is a fire attack and is also the attack he used to punch Kaido to the ground at the very start of roof piece.

I feel like Oda is heavily hinting at this here in this chapter but what do you think?

TL;DR :

Rocks is the man marked by flames and the hint is his Jolly Roger. Rocks could have been a Lunarian.