The front-end damage was going to drive me crazy until I fixed it (I broke the number one rule of engine swapping... clean shells only!)
The offending piece of metal was the drivers side headlight bracket/upper load path. It was pushed in and bent, causing the fender to sit a solid ~5mm under the edge of the hood. Thankfully the metal in question was readily available from OE parts suppliers.
After some liquid courage I broke out the spot-weld cutter and cutting wheel and went to town!
And voila! One removed headlight bracket! That upper load path (lower side of image below) was also pivoted inward. Heat and a big hammer fixed that!
I cleaned things and and tossed in the new metal. Fit in very nicely to the frame rail and radiator support. You can see below where the upper load path and the new headlight bracket still had their disagreement. The grease pen arrow points to where the metal pivoted about a spot weld.
At this point I opted to secure the new bracket with fasteners instead of plug welds. Just had to make sure to use locking threads and enough of them to prevent paint rubbing and corrosion. The hood and fender finally have a gap again!