Indeed, historically, though not of direct relevance to general relativity, analogue models played a key role in the development of electromagnetism – Maxwell’s derivation of his equations for the electromagnetic field was guided by a rather complicated “analogue model” in terms of spinning vortices of aether. Of course, once you have the equations in hand you can treat them in their own right and forget the model that guided you – which is exactly what happened in this particular case.