Generally speaking, Pokémon created just to fill the gap left by certain other roles being left out needn't be novel, and already came up in Gen. III with Taillow, Zigzagoon, and so on. It's more like a like-for-like substitution in football, as it were, than a shout-out, technically. In any case, while a couple of those names come across as slightly self-deprecating on their part: 'woobat' in contrast to 'Zubat,' emphasising 'woo' in a slightly cynical manner, for instance, while 'Roggenrola' of course would have been identified with the hidden Regis and their names, while nonetheless adding a slightly unserious reference to rock 'n' roll in the sense of generic enthusiasm. Evidently, there was little motivating them at the time to be too respectful about Gen. I, when most of their promotion at the time was that Gen. I and such were lacking things and hence of improvements of some kind to those, etc. In addition, the series is quite identified with the first generation of games, as well as their Pokémon, and as such they probably wouldn't have wanted to distract others or give others a chance to focus too much on those instead of the newer ones. Often they're more inclined towards ripping 'themselves' off, and of course a feature being new wouldn't stand out if there wasn't a significant similarity for the changes to it to stand out. There was a lot less atmosphere and direction to B&W as well, which means that generally it would come across more as taking and bringing it to seem like Gen. V rather than anything else in favour of such games.
