SMILE

SMILEs are dangerous, lab-made artificial Zoan Devil Fruits produced through a chemical called SAD. Donquixote Doflamingo and Caesar Clown once manufactured them, and the Beasts Pirates monopolized and consumed them, which gave rise to the crew ranks of Gifters, Pleasures, and Waiters. Unlike natural fruits, SMILEs lack individual names and are instead labeled by their animal, such as a Sheep SMILE. In appearance they resemble Vegapunk's artificial fruit, looking like colorful spotted apples with a smaller spot nested inside each marking. The fruits are credited in-universe to Doflamingo, whose epithet is Joker, and Caesar, both fitting nods to the cruel, laughter-forcing nature of the failures.

The essential ingredient is SAD, a substance blended from the extracted Lineage Factors of many animals, and only Caesar knows how to make it, so production hinged on his cooperation. After he brewed SAD in his Punk Hazard lab, it traveled to the SMILE Factory in Dressrosa, where luminescent sunflowers lit indoor apple trees fed the chemical through irrigation canals. The enslaved Tontatta dwarves, tricked into believing the fruits were medicine, could yield only one viable SMILE per ten attempts. A working SMILE grants animal transformation plus enhanced physique, and users gain select traits of their animal, like a bat's sharp hearing or a gazelle's speed, though sometimes without the matching stamina, and some parts gain abilities beyond the real creature, such as a fire-breathing lion. The catch is severe: the ninety percent of failures grant no power yet still strip the ability to swim and permanently lock the eater into constant smiling and laughter, unable to show any negative feeling even amid grief or injury. These side effects persist even in a partially eaten failed fruit. SMILE users are also uniquely vulnerable to the Kibi Kibi no Mi's taming dango, a weakness genuine Zoans do not share.

Kaidou of the Four Emperors hoarded the SMILEs and fed them to his crew to build an army of over five hundred Gifters, the strongest of whom rose to Shinuchi rank. Unlike natural Zoans, which allow full beast and hybrid shifts, SMILE users typically convert only certain body parts, sometimes in mismatched spots, like Sheepshead growing ram horns from his hands, and some instead sprout a fully sentient animal that can resist or attack its host. Named examples span a vast bestiary, from Alpacaman, Batman, Gazelleman, and Holed'em to Daifugo, Babanuki, and Hawkman. The fruits proved cruelly versatile beyond the crew: the Wano shogun Kurozumi Orochi slipped leftover defective SMILEs into food given to the poor of Ebisu Town, condemning them to mask their suffering with permanent grins. Once Law and the Straw Hats destroyed the SMILE Factory and SAD supply, production ceased forever, ending the creation of new Gifters and Pleasures.