In One Piece Green: Secret Pieces was revealed an early concept of Dadan who would have originally been a man and a pipe smoker. The picture in the bottom left corner shows another version of Dadan that Oda drew, revealing that she was very beautiful when she was young.
While absent in the manga, the anime shows Dadan dreaming of herself as a young, beautiful lady. This appearance is similar to one of the sketches of younger Dadan shown in One Piece Green by Oda, but the sketch seen in the data book looks more serious than the Dadan in her dream.
In some translations, when Ace mentions Dadan before his death he refers to Dadan as “him”. This is because the Japanese word he used to refer to her was genderless, and the translator did not know Dadan’s gender at the time.
Two years later, after reading the news about Luffy’s return, Dadan and the other bandits celebrate, with all of them wearing straw hats while Dadan herself is scrapbooking news articles.