VIM in gnome-terminal keeps printing weird 001B character
Solution 1:
I have found the reason those escape appear by disabling everything in my .vimrc file and reenabling incrementally. For those people with the same problem, it is caused by the following setting in the .vimrc file:
set visualbell "Use a visual error indicator instead of a beep
Removing the above line fixed the problem.
Silly and logical, but well... There you have it.