I never had remote with my ISx, last ISx Reference ordered without remote, but my local dealer "offered" us the remote control without rising the base price.
Yeah, stuff that’s just stored for nearly a year at a time, makes sense to me. I did have this happen in an alarm clock, somehow. Out of curiosity, I just checked my Blu-ray remote, which is the one we use least often (we maybe watch a couple of discs per year now, because of streaming, and we use it to listen to CDs occasionally, but usually I just use the buttons on the front of the player for that). Batteries are perfectly fine, and must have been in there for at least three or four years at this point.