I don't understand this fixation with 476, really.
What really happened that leads people to claim it's the moment the Empire ended?
Romulus Augustulus was a usurper and a puppet of Orestes (who by the way was only slightly more "Roman" than Odoacer). When Odoacer defeated Orestes and forced R.A. to abdicate, he accepted the nominal authority of the legitimate Emperor Julius Nepos - an arrangement identical to past ones, where power resided with the powerful Magister Militum and not the Emperor. To give a few examples:
- Flavius Aetius and the teenage Valentinian III
- Ricimer and Libius Severus
- Ricimer and Olybrius
- Gundobad and Glycerius
- Orestes and Romulus Augustulus
If the Roman Empire didn't end on any of those above mentioned instances, it didn't end in 476 either.
One could make the case that the Western Roman Empire ended when, upon the death of Julius Nepos, both the eastern Emperor and the de facto ruler of Italy decided not to appoint another Emperor, and instead have only a single one, residing in Constantinople.
However, speaking from a practical point of view, nothing really changed in Italy at that moment either, to warrant 480 A.D. to be defined as the "end":
Nominally, an ethnic Roman was acknowledged as Emperor, who resided somewhere other than the Italian peninsula (a situation which could be found as far back as Constantine the Great). Real power continued to be shared between the leader of the Army (Odoacer, later Theodoric), whilst the business of governing was increasingly being carried out by the Senate in Rome.