OH I never that ermac stuff came from an interview. What I first saw of it was a pair of glared pictures in EGM. The story from the player who sent them in was. I think...
He was playing as johnny cage Vs. johnny cage(cpu) in the level with the statues (not sure which), and there was a glitch where the game let him accidentally do a fatality mid level with the cpu at half health, but the cpu character didnt die. Then the red ninja showed up and beat the shit out of him. The picture i saw were taken with a flash so it was hard to see, but it was a redish ninja holding johnny's head after a fatality and there was some text I could not read. The arcade cabinet then went shithouse after that supposedly and had to be rebooted.
Now it might have been a total joke by EGM, BUT it was in there, and it wasn't just a screen cape, but a picture of the whole cabinet monitor from a few feet back.
THATS what i thought ermac was, some one-time, insane, never-happening-again mistake that people swore could be reproduced when it couldn't.
When ermac finally appearded in later mk games, my freind and I just thought that since they could never convince anyone it was a crazy glitch, they just finally put him in.