I haven't watched in years so I'm still hazy on it but I always felt like Ford in SGA had a very open ended death, like as in I didn't know he was even gone for good until I read a writer's blog.

I think the problem was they had made him so invincible that you really needed to see his death and know for sure, but the way he was killed was just "oh by the way he was on that ship that exploded."