* Once upon a time, it was possible to create identical chains of transactions.
Wow, got a link to this?
Not off the top of my head, but look for the discussion around BIP 34.
The whole point of adding the height to the coinbase was the make each generate transaction unique. Prior to that, it was possible to create duplicates. And since duplicate generations would have identical hashes, you could, in theory, make a chain of transactions starting from one generate, and then duplicate the entire chain later.
It would be difficult to trick someone using this quirk, but not impossible. Also, it was ugly. Which is why it got fixed.