After Deckert finds out that Tyrell’s assistant is a replicant, Tyrell says that he programmed memories into her as a sort of “cushion” so her emotions are less raw and it makes them easier to control. Tyrell couldn’t program them to feel less instead he had to work around it by creating memories. Memories were the means to which he could control/manage the emotions of the replicant’s without taking away from the human capacities of their program. They were a design tactic to determine the character of the replicant’s, yet it seems as though his assistant replicant has a character of her own. The memories were programmed yet the way she relates to it feels very much like her own. The weird thing about the replicants is that Tyrell and his engineers programmed them, so you’d think they’d be the one in control, but the replicants are able to use their programming to act in ways in which the programming couldn’t account for. And maybe it is in their acting against the corporation that they are able to assert a character that they have created themselves rather than a character that has been designed for them.