@Jeff
It's not necessarily fake. It is entirely possible to incorporate the OS3.5/OS3.9 ROM Updates in to a 3.1 kickstart image to make a version 3.5/3.9 kickstart. The version number will even change on the purple "boot" screen if you have no hard drive plugged in and no floppy in the drive. I did this with my A1200 and burned the resulting image to EPROMs.
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moto