I think you're right. The feature is the obliquity support that are responsible for both your issues. In the AFNI format, the obliquity only affects one AFNI attribute, the IJK_TO_DICOM_REAL. For NIFTI, that field is used to define the s-form of the NIFTI format to define the coordinate system. Your workaround of using an AFNI format would work, but you would have to reset the IJK_TO_DICOM_REAL to the cardinal equivalent with "3drefit -deoblique" before copying to NIFTI.