Ready Player One has already heavily explored the loss of identity within the pop culture virtual reality, but this further blurs the lines, making it unclear who - not just what - is real.
This is more sensible for Morrow, but unnerving in its own way for how it introduces the notion that people in the OASIS can take over NPCs. That's all so ridiculous, however, that it leads to a more disquieting suggestion the Curator may be an NPC that Ogden periodically takes over in an observational capacity to keep tabs on prospective hunt winners.
