His jolly roger, a skull with two curved arrow-headed swords behind resembling horns, reveals on further inspection both the male and female sex symbol twice on it (the female sex symbol consists of the skull’s eye socket and the sword’s hilt while the male symbol is the arrow shaped sword blade and the same eye socket).
His prisoner number in Impel Down was 6582.
Iva refers to himself as a “Newkama”, as opposed to an “Okama”. This is a double pun made by mixing words. It basically goes “Newhalf” (Transsexual) + Okama (Crossdresser) = Newkama (Newcomer).
His appearance is heavily influenced by Tim Curry as, “Dr. Frank N. Furter” In the 1975 motion picture, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
His face paintings are like those worn by the members of the glam metal band KISS. The make-up is so thick on his face that it was able to withstand a direct attack from Magellan’s Hydra.
In One Piece Green: Secret Pieces, an early concept of Ivankov is shown. In Oda’s sketchbook, a drawing of Ivankov with a more realistic-looking face was found. He had a much thinner, longer face and black hair, but his facial make-up does not seem to have changed much.
Like many other characters, Ivankov has a distinct speech style. He has a tendency to put “buru” at the end of a sentence (like many other catchphrases in the series, it has no actual meaning other than a distinct way of talking). He pronounces “watashi” (I, me, myself) and “anata” (you -very polite-) with a v(vatashi and vanata), and changes words with “w” sounds for “v” sounds instead.
His surname could be derived from Italian, where the word Emporio roughly translates to “store” or “general store”, or from Russian, “Ivankov” resembles Russian surname Ivanov. His given name, “Ivankov” is actually derived from Japanese. According to the SBS for volume 58, “Ivankov” (Which is written “Iwankofu”) is derived from the Japanese word Iwa which means a “boulder” or “stone”. The name comes from a nickname given to an actual crossdresser and friend of Oda, Norio Imamura.
Ivankov is probably partially inspired from the character “Emporio” met in the 6th part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean: Emporio is a boy born in prison, living in a hidden room unknown by the guards of said prison. He also helps the main character escape, as does Ivankov.
In the 6th fan poll, Ivankov ranked 76th.
