It's interesting, though, how ideas from disparate sources converge. I read through some of the Rikti lore, and was shocked to realise much of their backstory THAT I NEVER KNEW ended up very similar to my own alien race in the Curian, whom I made for the Phoenix Project. It's broad concepts, of course, but it's still concerningly similar enough to make me want to try harder.
Still, this is the sort of thing that, to me, made City of Heroes as awesome as it eventually became. It had a deep, rich backstory that implied connections and plotlines even if they were not literally in the game. It's also why I was so cross with Matt Miller's "ignore continuity" attitude to story writing which saw things like the Reichsman TF and the abandonment of nearly all old characters and groups in favour of brand new ones that ended up being a lot like them anyway.
Hell, the entire shtick behind Praetorian people seeing Earth as some kind of barbarous, disorderly world full of threatening individuals occurs almost word-for-word with the Rikti.
Those are some great stories, and I wish they had been utilised more instead of being abandoned for brand new concepts with very few links to the existing fiction.