Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

Hi, Everyone!

I've noticed that since updating to iOS 8.0.2 but before updating to 8.1.0, photos are missing in text & iMessage threads.

Here's how I noticed it:

On Friday of last week, I was looking at old pictures dating back to October 2013 in the detail view on a text message thread on my iPhone 5S, running iOS 8.0.2. Everything was there -- no problems.

Fast forward to Sunday evening: I decided to forward a photo I had stumbled upon Friday night, but this time in detail view every few pictures in the same thread were replaced with two overlapping blue rectangles in a white box. When you click them you just see a grey background with the file name and file type in blue. When you look at the picture in the conversation, it appears as a white box with a blue question mark. (see attached screenshot of all three instances).

This is happening in iMessage conversation as well as strictly Text Messages, and files are missing from both sides of the conversations. There are even some photos that are missing in the conversation but are still sitting safe and sound in my camera roll!

No settings were changed between Friday to Sunday evening-no automatic updates, battery didn't die, didn't reset my phone or drop it, etc.

Messages have been set to save forever. I have iCloud turned on for Photos.

Any ideas on why this is happening?

I have since upgraded (last night 10/20/14) to iOS 8.1 AND have reset all settings to see if it would solve the problem. Space isn't an issue--I have 3 GB of free space currently. No such luck! 😢