Okay, say I have a gameObject. it has, say, a Texture2D variable and maybe a GameObject var that is a prefab. If I just assign it through the editor, will the Texture2D and Prefab then be instantly loaded to RAM even though they won’t be used? if not then how do I avoid this?
anything thats in the scene is loaded into RAM
If you don’t want it in RAM, don’t have it in the scene 
right, but if it’s not in the scene per say but assigned as a variable, does that still count? if so, can I load stuff from the assets without assigning them to a var in the editor, but through scripting?
Assigned to anything in the scene is the same as in the scene.
Not in the scene means its in Assets/Resources and gets loaded through code.