In my opinion, devil fruits are not created by the "dreams" of users (and I certainly hope this is not the nature of the fruits). They are technology created in the past worlds and they are linked to the soul.
Here is my list of reasoning behind this affirmation:
Paramecia and Logia change your physical abylities and enable you to transform yourself or the surrounding into something else. They change your nature by linking to your soul. They were a first discovery by humans that allowed them to enhance their physical skills through technology.
Zoan and mythological Zoan fruits are more advanced technology that can do the same as the other fruits, but they have embedded memory. When humans realized that they could play with souls, someone started wanting eternal life. I theorize that they are the first scientific attempt to achieving inmortality (maybe by Imu?) by transfering your will and memories through the fruits.
Remember that we have Trafalgar Law's fruit that allows you to be inmortal. The nature of Devil Fruits may have been an attempt from humanity to get eternal life and enhanced abilities.
The abilities of Brook, Big Mom and Gekko Moria are different experiments made to try to achieve eternal life, and most likely that Imu's fruit ability will be one of the closest (and failed) experiments to get eternal life.
The longer the fruit has belonged to you and have been adapting within your soul, the more likely you will be to awaken the fruit power.
When the user dies, the fruit is re-appearing somewhere else, therefore being the embodiment of the previous user's will (their literal soul). In case of Zoan, as they are designed with memory, the fruit carries the user's will and part of their personality. This is why weapons are only embedded with Zoan type fruits (they can't make any decisions through paramecia and logia since they don't hold personalities within them).
Remember that Brook's soul didn't appear exactly near his body when he died? He gained conscience as a soul somewhere in the Florian Triangle mist and got lost. This may be the reason why fruits don't re-appear directly near the user, but somewhere else. They take some time to gain self-counsciuosness and get lost on the way to be reborn.
This is most likely the reason why they were called Devil fruits. They caused a social cathastrophe in the past.
Here is my list of reasoning behind this affirmation:
- As we already know, Vegapunk and Caesar Clown have been playing with the fruits and created copies of them that are almost perfect. This means that fruits can be made by human hands through study. They also said that Zoans are very hard to replicate.
- Oda himself refers to mythological fruits as MODEL. This is quite a technological way to describe the fruits. Model: Nika, Model: Phoenix, etc. They are part of an engineered product line.
- There exists an actual encyclopedia of devil fruits. This may be created through a study of the fruit powers that the author has seen, but let's be honest, how can you make an encyclopedia of powers that come from people's dreams? They would be endless if that were the case, and impossible to register all in a book. Most probable scenario is that the encyclopedia comes from the actual scientists that created them.
- In the world of One Piece, we have seen that souls can be manipulated, extracted and stored in many occasions (Brook, Big Mom, Gekko Moria). As Vegapunk said in the manga, people in One Piece has a soul, and it even has it's own weight.
- The name of the Devil fruits are by themselves a clue that there is something corrupted behind their true nature. They must have caused a major curse for humanity in the past.
Paramecia and Logia change your physical abylities and enable you to transform yourself or the surrounding into something else. They change your nature by linking to your soul. They were a first discovery by humans that allowed them to enhance their physical skills through technology.
Zoan and mythological Zoan fruits are more advanced technology that can do the same as the other fruits, but they have embedded memory. When humans realized that they could play with souls, someone started wanting eternal life. I theorize that they are the first scientific attempt to achieving inmortality (maybe by Imu?) by transfering your will and memories through the fruits.
Remember that we have Trafalgar Law's fruit that allows you to be inmortal. The nature of Devil Fruits may have been an attempt from humanity to get eternal life and enhanced abilities.
The abilities of Brook, Big Mom and Gekko Moria are different experiments made to try to achieve eternal life, and most likely that Imu's fruit ability will be one of the closest (and failed) experiments to get eternal life.
The longer the fruit has belonged to you and have been adapting within your soul, the more likely you will be to awaken the fruit power.
When the user dies, the fruit is re-appearing somewhere else, therefore being the embodiment of the previous user's will (their literal soul). In case of Zoan, as they are designed with memory, the fruit carries the user's will and part of their personality. This is why weapons are only embedded with Zoan type fruits (they can't make any decisions through paramecia and logia since they don't hold personalities within them).
Remember that Brook's soul didn't appear exactly near his body when he died? He gained conscience as a soul somewhere in the Florian Triangle mist and got lost. This may be the reason why fruits don't re-appear directly near the user, but somewhere else. They take some time to gain self-counsciuosness and get lost on the way to be reborn.
This is most likely the reason why they were called Devil fruits. They caused a social cathastrophe in the past.
