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).
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.
In an SBS, Oda jokingly stated that Ivankov will rent out his hair to up to three people for Beli5000 a night. When he is moving and the people in his hair see an ocean, they are charged extra for an “ocean view”. He also has a very comfortable room in his crown. There is also a “Face Growth Hormone” service for up to thirty people.
His prisoner number in Impel Down was 6582.
In the 5th fan poll, Ivankov ranked 64th.