Just a guess -- perhaps ouroborous[0] = ouroboros; creates a new reference to ouroboros and stores that in ouroboros[0], so comparing ouroboros and ourobo

Just a guess -- perhaps ouroborous[0] = ouroboros; creates a new reference to ouroboros and stores that in ouroboros[0], so comparing ouroboros and ouroboros[0] with === would claim they're the same type but not the same value. Not an expert though, so I could be wrong, but that'd explain the behavior to me.