Dr Strangelove said:

Is there any hope in heaven that you guys could change the gladiators to anonymous gladiators as one looks like a dear friend of mine (face and body type) and the other looks like me (face and body type). The solution i propose would be 2 gladiators wearing masks where faces would be nearly completely obscured. 

Hehehehe sorry is this 1st april fool just a little bit late lol

I'm not sure if they will do it. I remember in past that there was some Persian mission in game - Soldier inc and they set up first and last name of some criminal who needed to be killed to finish that Persian position(they have different name for PP on Soldier so I use this known expression)  and guess what..that was first and last name of our CEO(hegemon in coalition) so we had big protest over that but I don't think they devs have changed that. That was like 3 years ago I really don't rememmber all details.

If it is not a jest, I can assure you that any resemblance NPCs have to real people is unintentional, though I have to admit it would be a bizarre coincidence. It's not so bad though since the Phylarch battle is only going on to the knock out, seeing as both gladiators keep coming back for more