I'm happy to hear you enjoyed the narrative! The ending is supposed to fade to all white and then fade into a final ending dialogue, but it takes about 20 seconds for that to happen so maybe you didn't wait enough, or the game broke (which could also very well be lmao)
In terms of inspiration, I can't tell you much because the other person on our team did the writing, but I'll try and get him to share some of the details on that :p