Via Protodude's Rockman Corner and Kobun 20, we have some old
design docs about various relationships/events prior to MMX1, written in-between development of that game and MM5 in 1993. Highlights:
* The "Zero is a Wily-bot" thing was planned from the start.
* Wily used Protoman as a reference for the ZERO Project. (The document uses a dotted line to denote this; another leads from Megaman to the X Project, suggesting to me that Mega and X [still] aren't the same 'bot, either)
* Apparently Zero was already at the bottom of the morality barrel, so the virus that was intended to sink him lower got confused and turned him into a do-gooder. In other words, that bizarre comment from MMZ Official Complete Works wasn't pulled out of Capcom's ass after all.
If/when we get more historical goodies out of the 30th Anniversary event, I guess we would move/rename this topic.