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Crackpot theory I had a couple months ago: what if Cliff, Arlo and Sierra were originally going to be Dakim, Ein and Venus?
They check off all the same general archetypes as a trio:
>Large, muscular male
>Smug, calculating nerd
>Femme-fatale beauty
Ein and Arlo also both share similarities in that they're both credited with the creation of the shadow pokemon. Ein, Dakim and Venus also use the Johto trio as their signature pokemon/legendaries, which would have served as a direct parallel to Spark/Candela/Blanche using the Kanto trio.
Niantic clearly knows enough about Pokemon Colosseum since they ported the concept of Shadow Pokemon exactly as it was from those games, sp I think it's plausible that they originally wanted to bring back the three Cipher Admins, and then either found out they didn't have the IP rights for the characters, or decided to just rebrand the entire concept with a Team Rocket skin for nostalgia marketability.
