So a bit more digging and it turns out that 2017 also had the hex editor font set to Apple Braille (no clue why/how). BUT it doesn't render as braille, it looks more like menlo. Further investigation shows that none of the symbolic fonts (symbols, wingdings, emoji, etc) render as symbols. They're all converted to a normal looking font. In 2018, the symbol fonts are rendered as symbols.
So I guess it's a non-bug after all <sigh>
-Tim