There were real microcontrollers based on the 6502: the Rockwell R6501Q and R6511Q from 1982 for example.
also
This is a real SOC that was commercialized in the early 1980s. The German magazin c't had a terminal project in their first edition from December 1983 free archived copy page 41 that used it to process the communication, the keyboard matrix and the CRT controller.
Rockwell used their 6502 kernel then for years in their modem chipsets that they licenced to OEM. These kernels were beefed up and I've seen versions that clocked the 6502 at 70Mhz for the V34bis modems.
