Oh, what a thorough postmortem! I've seen your posts on the LemmaSoft Forums and always appreciate how informative you are, so this was a treat to read (no pun intended?)
For reference, I saw this post linked on the vndevs reddit and haven't actually played the game yet (though I'm certainly going to now all things considered). I was mainly looking at the reddit to see if I could get a gauge if it was worth advertising on, so you saying you felt like you didn't get a return on the investment was useful (if somewhat ironic haha).
I also love the way you break down your references, it really makes playing games with that in mind like a scavenger hunt of breaking down inspirations.