Shanks suddenly getting a movie after 25 years of OP and waiting for him to get any major screentime or his own arc especially, is giving me some major death flags too tbh.
It reminds me of when Jiraiya went on that solo "suicide misison" which ended up being literal after all.
Or even Oden refusing help and trying to deal with Orochi and Kaido in Wano alone, taking all that burden upon himself.
Shanks is probably gonna go out in a similar way to Oden, hes probably gonna try and hinder Blackbeard drastically and try to prevent him or delay from becoming Pirate King somehow or even King of the World.
I believe there is a trope about men dying when they get revealed to be fathers or something like that. Similar to tropes like a cop announcing hes gonna retire soon and this is his "last case", a final sendoff to his own career and ultimately his own life too.
Also after rewatching Robocop recently, the original and awesome Peter Wellers one, it makes me think of how Robocop (before he became Robocop ofc) went in after those criminals and only had another police officer with him and he got split up from her and ended up getting ambushed and straight up dismembered by the enemy gang, after he thought he got the jump and thus upper hand on them.
This is the closest I can find to that trope I was talking about above:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FatalFamilyPhoto
Ironically this is kinda fitting too:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedShirt
Shanks is a main character ofc, one of the most important and pivotal but we still barely know anything about him. I fear we will learn a LOT mroe about him just before or after he dies. Ye olde flashback means death or vice versa.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathByFlashback
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PosthumousCharacter
I'm really scared for Shanks, out of all the characters in One Piece, his death will be the most painful and impactful if it does happen. Most personal to Luffy, losing his effective and better father figure and biggest influence on himself, his idol.
The pain of Jiraiya's and Ace's deaths have never truly gone away for me either, never truly healed.