I now wonder if the reason that people had different accounts of how/when the MI2 ending was created is partly because of how similar the MI2 and RtMI endings are, in terms of there being a pirate adventure park…
It sounds a bit like Bill Tiller had been told the original secret and that it was originally meant to be the ending to MI1, and then assumed that it had then been used as the MI2 ending because that sounds like such a similar idea.
I don’t know St.-Elsewhere, so skipping that one.
Bill’s comment can be truthful if Ron always intended the world of Monkey Island to be an amusement park - which he arguably did, according to a certain plaque.
Ron’s comment can be truthful if he always conceived an imaginary Calvin and Hobbes world, but didn’t think to reveal it at the end (and/or didn’t think to go Empire Strikes Back) until the last minute.
The disparity between Bill and Ron here can fall to a number of things. Maybe Ron always conceived the amusement park for MI1, but never intended to have it spelled out in the ending. Maybe Ron never intended the “I am your brother” and cursed voodoo eyes at the end of MI1, so that’s what he means. But meanwhile, Bill Tiller is just thinking that Amusement Park Reality = The Ending, while Ron isn’t thinking in those terms.
Exactly, you just have to think about the old high-res-cutscenes and purcells cover-artworks. Ron once even stated, he always wanted it to look like that.