I agree, I think people were influenced by the Story of Star Wars LPs and stuff like that. But I *want* to believe!
Someone on this board, I forget who, has memories of seeing the movie in theaters a few times, and there was no scene of Vader flying away at the end. The story sounded credible to me.
Anyway, it would be cool to see *some* kind of variation between prints, no matter how small of a difference.