I've managed to resolve this on my own, but I thought that I should stilll post this here for all to read, so you can keep this from happening to you...
About a week or so ago, I noticed that a couple of my safari friends had no trainer image anymore. As one of them was my character on my other game (I have 2 systems, and both X and Y, so I had them friend each other), I wondered what was going on. Then I started noticing that, if I saw that person again in the game, their image would reappear... and another person would vanish in their place! And it seemed to be spreading... By the end of the first day, 7 faces were missing, but by the end of day 2 it was 15 faces that were gone! And the number kept rising...
I went to Google and searched to see if anyone else has had the same problem, and sure enough I found where a few others before me had asked about the same issue. The responses were confusing and varied... especially since no one seemed to really know, and could only offer guesses at best. I did notice that the most common theory was that the game could only save 100 faces, and if you had more people than that, it would eliminate the older ones to make room for the newer people.
At first, I thought that was rediculous... why would the game have a 100-person limit? No one can have more than 100 friends listed anyways, so how could anyone possibly exceed that? But as the days went on, and more people disappeared, I began to wonder... So finally, I took a look on the PSS at the Friends section, and counted all the people there. Yup, 100 people... and now I saw that some of them were people who I'd deleted, either because I'd helped to check their safari and ended up not needing it myself, or because I'd cleaned out my friend list on the system to make room for more safaris.
But if I'd already deleted them, then why were their characters still there? So I looked to see if there was a button or anything on the profiles to let me delete their images... nope, nothing there. I also took note of the 3 people at the very end of the Friends list. And sure enough, the next faces to vanish were theirs.
And then it finally hit me, and I felt like the world's biggest idiot.
I'd been helping people to find out what Pokemon were in their safaris, as well as adding quite a few that I'd still been looking for. And with each new person I added, the number of faceless friends grew. And if the people at the very end of my already full Friends list on the PSS were the victims... then there was, indeed, a 100-friends limit. With every new face I added, the oldest was bumped off the list to make room. And since I had no way of actually removing the faces of players who I'd deleted (except to wait until it was their turn to vanish), there was nothing I could do to stop the problem.
Except to start from scratch.
Apparently, the ONLY way to clean out your Friends tab on the PSS is to either put in another copy of the game (of the same generation, such as switching X for Y, or using someone else's copy of the same game) for a minute, booting the game, and saving before switching back... or switching your game to another system briefly and doing the same thing. Doing so will completely erase EVERYONE'S image... but as long as you can see all of the friends that you still have, the ones you've deleted will be gone, and no longer cluttering the list.
I just did this 2 days ago, clearing the list... and out of 98 friends, I've already seen 51. If the rest never show up, I can still delete them and friend someone else with the same safari... and since I wouldn't have seen the first person online in-game (which would be my reason for deleting them anyways) I wouldn't have to worry about them cluttering the Friends list!
So... I hope that I wasn't too confusing there! Comments are welcome, along with any questions you may have! I just don't want to see this happen to any of you (which is why I posted this)... so please learn from my mistake!
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