That's interesting about the Hamburger. It's an obvious reference to Burger Bill (aka Becky) Heineman, who is my friend on facebook! So, I sent her a message to ask for clarification/verification on it. In any case, from what I've gathered from personal email correspondence with Michael, there seems to have been some bad blood between the two; he wanted to emphasize that Becky had no role in the development of the original game. Here's exactly what he said:

Matt, I should mention that some of the stuff out there, particularly things written by Bill Heineman (who was barely involved the first few couple of years relating to the Bard's Tale and had virtually nothing to do with BT1 and BT2) are incorrect. I knew Bill well at the time and he was something of a hermit who huddled in his cubicle, out of touch with the larger process at Interplay. So feel free to check back on any facts with me and I'll give you the accurate account.