Yup. LEDs can dim in two ways. Either by taking the dimmerchannel to 0 or by taking the red, green, and blue channels all to 0. If you are running it in a 3 channel mode, there is no dim channel. Since the fader controls the dim channel, it doesn't matter what the fader is at since it is being dimmed with the color channels. When you bring the color channel up the unit turns on.
The fader controls intensity, which, when running in RGB mode, the LED's don't have. Thus, when you play back a cue the board sets all attributes and the LED's will come on to the full value set in the cue. They will continue to behave like this unless you create a virtual intensity (dimmer) channel.
The snap might also have to do with the LEDs and not the Hog. I know my WDM units dim even when you use the RGB channels to dim them (although they have a dimmerchannel that HAS to be used, they don't have a JUST RGB mode). What units are these?