Mod_Rewrite and the Paragraph Marker (PilCrow) - php

Question

I built a website that works fine in development but not working correctly in production. I can't tell if the issue is related to the .htaccess or improperly configured vhosts. Essentially, the issue comes with the URL rewrites in my custom framework which relies on URL parameters called controller and action. Visiting a url such as domain.com/account/new would rewrite as domain.com/index.php?controller=account&action=new. Instead, when doing a dump of the $_SERVER global at the very beginning of my bootstrap (before any application logic has had a chance to mess with anything) I'm receiving this:
["QUERY_STRING"]=> string(41) "controller=index.php&action=index¶ms="
Where does that pilcrow (paragraph marker) come from? It doesn't matter what URL I try it still comes out that way.
NOTE: Other sites on the same server are able to do URL rewrites with no problem. It seems to be only this one.
I have verified mod_rewrite module is loaded and shows up in php -i / phpinfo().
Here is my .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([^/]+/)*favicon\.ico$ assets/img/favicon.ico [L,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/assets.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !favicon\.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)(/)([^/]+)(/)(.*) index.php?controller=$1&action=$3&params=$5 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)(/)(.*) index.php?controller=$1&action=$3&params= [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)(/) index.php?controller=$1&action=index&params= [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+) index.php?controller=$1&action=index&params= [L]
Dev Environment:
MacOS 10.7
Apache 2.2.22
PHP 5.4.15
Production Environment:
Linux (Kernel 2.6.32)
Apache 2.2.3
PHP 5.3.3
TL;DR; My .htaccess rules are rewriting incorrectly and including a pilcrow (paragraph marker) followed by "ms=". Is this a problem with my htaccess rules? Does this seem like a server issue? I'm tearing out my hair trying to figure this out.
EDIT #1
I just noticed that in my htaccess, something like this index.php?controller=$1&action=$3&params= contains "&para" which is the HTML entity for the pilcrow symbol which would make complete sense why it turns into that symbol followed by ms=. Now the bigger question is why would an htaccess process HTML entities?
EDIT #2
Ok, so I must be ignorant. It was displaying that because I was viewing it in the browser. When I went to "view source" it comes through as ["QUERY_STRING"]=> string(41) "controller=index.php&action=index&params=". Ok fair enough, now to figure out why it is catching the filename index.php in the $1 variable. Hmm.

Answer 1

I was unable to solve my issue so I rewrote everything to pass all values as a "resource" in my .htaccess like:
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php?resource=$1
And then within the application logic I handled all of the processing. Thanks for viewing.