The thumbs are computed and stored based on the URL of the each item itself (the key) rather than the thumb URLs themselves. It's possible that you had incorrect data and they got cached incorrectly. Try clearing out ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/Thumbnails/Video (assuming it's a video plug-in) and restart Plex.
That points to it having been incorrectly cached.
It could be, yeah; the backgrounds live in the ...thumbnails/Programs/Fanart directory, you can clear them out.
Thanks for the reply. Not so much trouble as me not understanding the caching mechanism or how to clear it out. That should be enough to get me over this hump.