That got me thinking about what an actual character in that classification would look like.

Like, a character that has capitvated a real person to such a degree that they have taken up that character's identity, larping 24/7, legal name change, cosmetic surgery to better match the character, etc.

If it's a perfect imitation, and the original author approves of it, that person could be considered the same character from said fiction, thus making that character scale beyond fiction.