I wondered if it was supposed to be Biggs and Jessie at some point, but I didn't think of the timeline being wrong. It was most likely just sprite reusage, but it's silly to reuse important sprites.

It's like how Watts appears in the audiance for Edea's parade in FFVIII - it's probably not supposed to be Watts at all, they just reused the image of him (silly, because it's not like we don't notice).