Update, I've gotten it semi working. Somethings wrong with my retroarch setup, the default bios directory is not the actual bios folder, i had to manually set it to that. Semi working because I can't seem to get retroarch to use global configs, i have to manually set each systems directory. But thats not the topic of this thread. I guess for the time being this is a moot issue, the asterix dont seem to mean anything and arent causing the problem. Thank you all for your time. I wonder if my issue stems from doing an update to retropie 4.4 rather than a clean image?

@pjft Actually, they don't. When I transfer via USB, the autocopy feature doesn't duplicate them. They only exist on the stick. And when I do manual transfers in file manager (of bios or themes), I ignore them, so no sweat.

Okay, it looks like I have it running pretty clean now. Thank you all so much. Next I'll try to figure out how to add Famicom CDS, Super Famicom, Virtual Boy and maybe Game & Watch directories/roms to my build. Time to start hunting through the threads [slaps and rubs hands together in eager excitement] :)