I know you already realize it, but others might not, but xpdf is still "bugged" in this case. In the bug report, the missing font is substituted with a default

I know you already realize it, but others might not, but xpdf is still "bugged" in this case. In the bug report, the missing font is substituted with a default sans-serif font (presumably DejaVu Sans or Ubuntu on Ubuntu), while in your image it is replaced by Times Roman. The spacing of the text is completely wrong in both cases, but it's just worse in the sans-serif case.