My Hurley is from the original timeline where the plane wasn't meant to crash. He never won the lottery, never went to Australia, never had to be on the plane. I don't really have an explanation as to why, but it was mostly because the two other LOST characters were from the "real" time, too. Neither one of them crashed. But we had an Ana Lucia, I read, that had crashed and was somehow here, so the events are known IC to Charlie, I think.
But Hurley has been getting Desmond-flashes from the date that rescue crews would have found Widmore's Flight 815, even though it didn't crash in this version of the real world. He knows something is going on, but would never, ever be able to realize that it was because of someone messing with fate and time.
In that regard, you could get to play Ben as he was before he, Richard, and Jacob went back in time in 2007 to '96 to begin their Island takeover. That way it wouldn't require you to really have to mess with the strings of time because Ben should know what was happening because this is his first run through. Maybe I will pick up Jacob, because in this time he'd be an actual person and not half-dead ghost in a cabin!