In Crysis 2, we all know that when there is a crashed pod, or a kill there is a sign telling you "Capture" or a skull indicating the death of a teammate. Well, those floating signs seem to be on-top and thus sometimes block you from seeing who is behind it. Happens rarely, but still, it happens.
My proposal is that the player should always be on-top(i.e in front of) of such graphical objects.
I suspect that they're just decals pasted on the 2D post-porcessing like most menues. Certainly possible without actually integrating them into the 3d world (as cards) by using dithered rendering.