The mistake:
I git rebase -i --root'ed my branch, ignorantly thinking I could reword the first commit differing from the master (the GitHub for Windows default view is the comparison to master, hiding it's entirety).
I grew a Silicon Valley beard while 900+ commits loaded themselves into Sublime. Exiting with no changes, I charged my battery then proceeded to shave, as all 900+ individual commits nonchalantly rebased - resetting their commit times to now.
Determined to beat Git and preserve the original times, I deleted this local repository and re-cloned from the remote.
Now it had re-added a most recent unneeded commit to master I wished to remove, so proceeded like so.
Exhausting the options:
I didn't wish to git revert - it would create an additional commit, giving Git the upper hand.
git reset --hard HEAD did nothing, after checking the reflog, the last and only HEAD was the clone - Git wins.
To get the most recent SHA, I checked the remote repository on github.com - minor win.
After thinking git reset --hard <SHA> had worked, I updated another branch to master and 1... 2... poof! the commit was back - Git wins.
Checking back out to master, time to try git rebase -i <SHA>, then remove the line... to no avail, sad to say. "If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST". Ah...glossed over new feature troll the n00b in the 2.8.3 release notes.
The solution:
git rebase -i <SHA> then d, drop = remove commit.
To verify, I checked out to another branch, and voila - no hiding commit to fetch/pull from the master.
https://twitter.com/holman/status/706006896273063936
Good day to you.