I was thinking… everyone knows that nobody dies in One Piece. All the characters who started the story alive, stay alive (i.e. the only dead ones already started the story as dead people - Roger, Bellemerre, etc)
But now, with Thriller Bark, although the death is still away, for the first time the characters are going for good.
For the first time, characters that were active after the story started will not be around anymore: Taratalan was the first and now we also have Kumasy and Ryuuma... probably all the zombies will follow their path.
With the zombies, the first characters are going away forever. This is not death itself, but is pretty close. So... do you guys think this could be a prelude to death in OP?
(errors? bad english, sry)