For more context, see the discussion at [[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Commons-only file acting strangely]].

So at first glance it appears the following happened:
*file was deleted by legoktm via normal action=delete (there is a log action to prove it)
*for some reason entry in image table was not removed. Page text and the actual image was deleted (but htcp purge maybe didn't happen)
*stefan2 saw the image on the page with no description, so created one.
*image eventually falls out of varnish cache, so now we see broken image. Mediawiki still has entry in image table, so still tries to display broken image, and hence doesn't use commons image)

Conclusion: filebackend operations aren't as atomic as they should be.

Fixed by moving, then deleting local page.

Not really a fix for the underlying error, more a workaround, hence moving from FIXED to WORKSFORME.