Some events that happen in this game revolve around real life events with certain characters. I believe Kiki died from some sort of condition and I don't quite remember the details for Corey.
Water could break her fall if deep enough or a pokemon could save but she won't die considering Ame has placed certain things that have occured between gym leaders into the storyline.
However, there was another death and if you're saying that 3/4 of the depictions in Shade's gym are deaths (obviously we know 3 of them clearly) I believe it was Lin whom was in the other depiction and that seems plausible that she dies since she is Team Meteors Boss and there are a few people that would want her dead but I can only guess Saphira for now since of what happened at Tanzan mountain.
It's not silly to have a story that involves real life events of those certain people since it adds extra personality to the game. Besides those who participated in the League will remember some of the events and what Ame said about it too. Wouldn't you rather have characters with a set sort of personality and a storyline based on real life instead of a completely made up character that you can tell the forced storylines and personality at times?
In the end of the day,if you use a real life person to be a base of a character, design and teams can be created later since you can use their real life storylines and personalities essentially the hardest bit to come up with is done then you don't need real life designs of the people since it's gonna be too similar you can use personalities and team typing for designs and pretty much the same for teams. You will need to obviously make up the storyline should either of the two scenarios happen:
The person wishes not to allow the events you want into the game
OR
You wish to make up the storyline on your own
An opinions an opinion so it doesn't really matter I suppose since everyone has their own perspective.
