Bitbucket's Pull Request engine tracks destination branches strictly by their string name (refs/heads/branch-name) rather than their commit lineage. If a target branch is deleted via the Git CLI and recreated from a completely different base commit, Bitbucket silently re-attaches any previously open PRs to the new branch.
Crucially, Bitbucket does not alert the PR author that the target branch’s history was completely rewritten, nor does it drop existing PR approvals. This results in developers unknowingly merging massive amounts of outdated, contaminated commit history into freshly cut release branches, completely bypassing code review safeguards.
