Maybe the most early internet aspect of this is something putting this much effort into creating a plausible secret history complete with edited photographs to back it up, but not spending any time researching female actors so inventing an ex-stripper.
I remember also on a far smaller scale someone around then or a few years later doing a speculative (but not done as though it existed) look at an early 1960s Howard Hawks adaptation of Casino Royale. Can't remember who played Le Chiffre, but it did have Cary Grant as Bond and a young Joan Collins as Vesper.