Haha, yes, this just kills me - if you want to be sure that all the options are set correctly, you pretty much have to have a script which goes through all the objects in the scene and sets their per-object attributes correctly, and also sets the global attributes. I did that and now whenever I feel like backface culling…
Also I believe there is an option that actually raycasts your selctions. aka really performing on a 'what you see' basis instead of normals pointing at the camera or not. Also maya is a mess between the visual BFC and the actual selection BFC. I have alittle script that just toggles it on and off in ... the way that works…