Interesting I wonder what the history of this design is? And how Hitachi's (or their partner's) die really wound up being re-marked as TI? If the die is a Chinese produced copy, why did they keep the markings during retooling?

I wish photographs of the packages were presented also.

Edit: The other "not genuine" die has quite a few similarities and it looks like one inspired the other.

If it's copied, they likely copied it entirely because trying to remove bits of the lithography mask is expensive and time consuming. Since it's not normally scene there's no use in spending the time or money to change it if you can get the mask.

Could it be that the Hitachi in the picture is also a fake, based on the same design as the faked Ti?

It could be a die copy but it could also be a used HA17555 harvested from e-waste and remarked as NE555 with a fresh date code.

I swear I've seen the logo on that one somewhere as well, but I can't seem to recall or find it anywhere else.

Wow, nice memory! Even I missed that. That means HA17555 is most likely also fake.