  Stackings in graphene have a pivotal role in properties to be discussed in
the future, as seen in the recently found superconductivity of twisted bilayer
graphene. Beyond bilayer graphene, the stacking order of multilayer graphene
can be rhombohedral, which shows flat bands near the Fermi level that are
associated with interesting phenomena, such as tunable conducting surface
states expected to exhibit spontaneous quantum Hall effect, surface
superconductivity, and even topological order. However, the difficulty in
exploring rhombohedral graphenes is that in experiments, the alternative,
hexagonal stacking is the most commonly found geometry and has been considered
the most stable configuration for many years. Here we reexamine this stability
issue in line with current ongoing studies in various laboratories. We
conducted a detailed investigation of the relative stability of trilayer
graphene stackings and showed how delicate this subject is. These few-layer
graphenes appear to have two basic stackings with similar energies. The
rhombohedral and Bernal stackings are selected using not only compressions but
anisotropic in-plane distortions. Furthermore, switching between stable
stackings is more clearly induced by deformations such as shear and breaking of
the symmetries between graphene sublattices, which can be accessed during
selective synthesis approaches. We seek a guide on how to better control -- by
preserving and changing -- the stackings in multilayer graphene samples.
