According to Omar Kendall (lead game designer of PSASBR), at one point during development, Cole MacGrath and Evil Cole MacGrath were going to be one character, who would start out neutral, and turn good or evil based on the player's actions. After this idea was dropped, they decided to just use the Hero version of the character.

However, "the IP holders felt really strongly that the way that the Cole character manifests, he really is two different guys, and they felt the character would be best served as two different and they really pushed for it."