I am certain this is a misconfiguration on my part, as this issue does NOT happen with the Default theme template in 4.3. 

However, I made customizations to the default theme from 4.2.7 and as of the update to 4.3, my search fields all appear this way:

with the search options, sans their background, constantly popped out. This happens on both my customized Dark and Light themes, but again does not occur on the included default, so I assume the mistake is mine. Has anyone seen this before? Do i have something in elSearchWrapper or elSearch toggled incorrectly?

There are a lot of changes between 4.2.7 and 4.3

You will have to revert the templates and re-do your edits (or delete the theme and create a new theme from scratch)

Well yeah the sledgehammer approach is always there and I'll keep it for dead last since its a lot of time to sink for a .X update, but is anyone aware of a surgical fix or at least a direction I could be poking at?

only fix is to use default ipb theme until you do as mentioned above (or purchase thme from MarketPlace)

Misunderstood your first post. Reverting the global.css alone corrected the issue entirely, thank you!

19 minutes ago, JwilsonVW said:

Misunderstood your first post. Reverting the global.css alone corrected the issue entirely, thank you!

you didn't make changes to the actual css files did you ... add your css to the custom.css file then upgrades will be easier

Just now, steve00 said:

you didn't make changes to the actual css files did you ... add your css to the custom.css file then upgrades will be easier

I didn't intend to customize it at all, almost all my changes were in custom.css, but the Revert button was indeed active for Global.css and reverting them altered none of my other changes, but fixed the search issue, so I assume me and my fists of ham changed something there I hadn't meant to!