I have not heard anything about it being removed. Most of the questionable folks were not on the Diablo team that I know of. There are tons of references to people in Diablo - usually slight variations of real names. People who work/ed there, as well as community members. Some of them you kind of have to know about it or you don’t realize it, but still.
Development Hell has a VERY low spawn rate of 1% or less, and you might need to be in Campaign mode.