She already knew about the road ponegliff
Yama the sheep guy knows about it, it doesn’t make her stand out. Actually including her in the conversation would have made her stand out.
what about Carrot being included in the talk with Nami and Chiffon about meme, Lola and Loki? Carrot now knows all about that and even expressed interest in the giants.
She also expressed interest with the dead walking and talking back on Thriller Bark in the same scene, that doesn’t mean she’s going to hunt down Moria so he can show his fruit off.
It’s comparing apples and oranges. The scene on Zou was the climax of the arc and one of the most important exposition drops in the series. The bath scene was a relatively minor one in WCI. It did not give us any gamechanging information, neither Luffy or Usopp (who will be the main figure in Elbaf) were involved, and Carrot herself has a completely negligible role in the conversation.
Likewise, Carrot was also included in the talk with the rest of the crew when Kin emon revealed the true story of Wano at the beginning of the arc. The talk that mentioned Oden's life and adventures and what happened to him.
A scene where all the majority of the interesting information was omitted from the reader, and where again, Carrot played no role whatsoever. I said I wanted Carrot to have been included in the discussion, maybe I should have specified that means
participation. Not floating around in the background occasionally inserting some inane comment about how wonderful adventures are, actually driving the conversation and making us think “yes, Oda is setting this character up to be a Strawhat.” Take Carrot out of the two scenes you’ve mentioned, and nothing changes. The conversation continues in the exact same way. Her presence is completely meaningless.
Her relationship to Pedro WAS hinted at.
I can’t see the picture, is it the Zou volume cover with Swirlyhats in the middle and the two Mink sides running parallel to them?
If it is- that’s not counting as a hint. There is no indication that Carrot is using a weapon given to her by Pedro, because there’s no indication Pedro had anything to do with the claws. Nobody looked at that and thought, ah, I bet Pedro was the one to give her those, because we had absolutely no reason to think that, because the two gave no indication that they had anything resembling a more than casual relationship until the chapter Pedro blew himself up.
As to the colour argument- the manga’s in black and white. We didn’t know there was a colour split to how the Minks dressed until WCI had already begun. When reading Zou, we couldn’t tell that Wanda was wearing a blue cape and Carrot a green. We’re looking for things that made Carrot stand out at the time, not retrospectively looking over minutiae to try and answer her lack of presence.
She's already got a link to Perospero who's has relevance to the dawn plot from the Pedro flashback. That's fine. The straw hats never have the most impressive fights when they join. Franky fought Fukuro, Brook didn't even win his fight. Jinbe fought Wadatsumi in a shared fight.
It still displays how Oda failed to make Carrot stand out in the Zou arc though, and how Oda has failed to give Carrot consistent relevance. Imagine if the Zou flashback had been framed from Carrot’s perspective, giving us some insight into her daily life, wish to escape and go on an adventure, a training session or something with Pedro, interrupted by Jack’s invasion, with the final scene being her wondering what Pedro means when he talks about the world waiting for Inu and Neko. And then her getting invited or sneaking into the talk in the Whale Tree and expressing a desire to help in the fight against Kaido, being told no because she’s too young, and then sneaking out and going to the Sunny anyway.
That’s a strong setup for Carrot to be an important future character and Strawhat character.