I have a variable that by all rights should be populated, upon which I call a method. When I do this, a null reference exception is thrown, so I go to the code, use intellisense to confirm that, yes, the variable is null. I look at the function I called: nothing out of the ordinary, so I go back to the line where the ex was thrown. At that point the variable which was null (causing the error in the first place), now is populated with the correct object that I was expecting to be there. The program is not moving -- it has hit a break, and I have not let it move forward, yet the variable changes values.
I've been able to reproduce the situation consistently here, so I really don't get what's gonig on -- how can a null object get an instance while the program is at a break?