Transform check should return null, but returns as initialized instead

Question

In my Player script, I initialize my FirePoint transform using GameObject.Find in the Awake function. In the editor, I purposely misspelled the name of FirePoint to test if the null check inside of my Fire function will print an error to the console. The only error that shows up is from the Awake function giving a NullReferenceException, but why don't I see my Debug.LogError? Instead, the else statement prints that the FirePoint is not null.

public class Player : MonoBehaviour
{

   [HideInInspector] public Transform FirePoint;

   private void Awake()
   {     
       FirePoint = GameObject.Find("FirePoint").transform;
   }

   private void Fire()
   {
       if (FirePoint == null)
       {
           Debug.LogError("FirePoint is null.");
       }
       else
       {
           print("FirePoint is NOT null.");
       }
   }       
}

Answer 1

A possible explanation could be that you set FirePoint to something in the inspector before you added the [HideInInspector] attribute. Adding that attribute makes it impossible to change the inspector value, but if there is already one set it won't get cleared.

If GameObject.Find("FirePoint").transform throws a NullReferenceException, then that method gets aborted before a new value gets assigned to FirePoint. So it would retain the original value.