You confuse variable and its value. tkinter.Variable is not a data container like list. It is a reference to external resource, Tcl variable, which contains value. If different Variable instances refer to different Tcl variables, they are different, even if values of these variables at some moment were equal. If they refer to the same Tcl variable, they can be considered equal. Details are different for different Tkinter classes: Font instances with the same name are equal, Variable instances with the same name are equal only if they have the same class (so that StringVar and IntVar are always different), Image and Widget instances with the same name are different. But in any case references to different resources are different.

Use analogy of Path instead of list. The Path object refers to external resource (file). Path objects with the same path are equal. Path objects with different paths are different, even if files have the same content.

I didn't close the шіігу right away because I was trying to explain his mistake to Ivo. There is no inconsistency, there is just a misunderstanding. Anyway, I'm closing it now.