1. As long as I am no missing anything.

Speaking of fainting: what happens if you do NOT take them to bed after they faint somewhere random? Do they die/disappear/despawn/whatever? Or auto-recover all the same, just without the stat boosts you get if you DO rescue them?
2. Yep, exactly that. Bummer, though: I never added Character Morpher; and I assume you meant "Ear Wiggle" - that one I actually DID install, BECAUSE I started having the ear issue - was hoping it might help as a bandaid fix, keep whatever is broken under control somehow. No dice. If I stick around long enough, I might just go on a plugin-disabling spree of my own.
3. What confuses me is that the Graphics plugin settings seem to override AI [settings], actually: AI Self-Shadowing option
remains disabled, but every time I fire up the game anew I am greeted by the FPS drop and enabled shadows, until I go to the Graphics plugin settings and disable shadows there yet again. Basically, the plugin overrides AI settings AND resets its own on every game launch. As for MGO - the sheer number of sliders scares me.

God forbid they decide to reset between launches, as well. At this point, I would probably be better off just disabling Graphics plugin (and keep DHH off - equally scared of settings there, and out-of-the-box DHH runs even worse than out-of-the-box Graphics).