My 16 villager Cycle was reset with Welcome Amiibo update?

[RooftopsRevolution]

Preface:
My friend and I discovered the twitter explainer about how letters worked in Population Growing so we began talking about the 16 villager Cycle.

16 Villager Cycle??:
Read this if you have no idea what this means

Spoiler

Have you lost a villager, tried to get them to move in then realized you can't for some unknown reason even though you have space and no voided villager? Don't be totally freaked out, I read up a lot about AC code from devs etc since I'm a gamedev and genuinely interested.
So basically what happens in Animal Crossing is that when your villager moves out, it's stored as a hex value on a list.
Just to give you an idea, it's kind of like:
Moved out villager 1: Freya
Moved out villager 2: Stitches
Moved out villager 3: Willow
Moved out villager 4: Empty
Moved out villager 5: Empty
and the list continues down until the last slot


If then Alfonzo moved out of your town, then your list would be:
Moved out villager 1: Alfonzo
Moved out villager 2: Freya
Moved out villager 3: Stitches
Moved out villager 4: Willow
Moved out villager 5: Empty


So basically in order to get Alfonzo back, you need to move out 16 villagers in order to push him off the moved out list to make him eligible to move back in traditionally. Note: I'm 90% sure this does NOT include Amiibo scans.
You can check who's still on your list by checking main street.

Iridescent and Discovery:
My oldest town was started on the release date in North America. I stopped playing when Chief, one of my faves, moved out by mistake over a year ago. Before he moved out was Katt, followed by Rocco, followed by Hazel. I didn't update to Welcome Amiibo when it came out.
I updated my game recently and scanned Chief in via Amiibo. He stated that this place has been familiar which I thought may have been the phrase they say if you scan someone still in the cycle. The day my friend and I were having a discussion, I went to Main Street to look for voided villagers. Nothing. I TT'd. Nothing. The only thing that appeared was Punchy who had just moved out last week post-update. I ended up finally decided to box up Rocco from my third town and he moved in. I've kept checking back and I'm only finding Punchy. With the fact that no other villager has moved out and I was able to move Rocco in means my list has been wiped?

Questions:
- Was your cycle wiped after updating?
- Is there any confirmation about this? Or is my game just glitched?
- Alternatively, if no one had the same experience, does it maybe have to do with time elapsed?

Help me figure this out I'm so confused. ;-;