[LightDestory]

Wow! I wasn’t aware rufus offered the capability without going through the entire process of “faking” an install. Have you given it a try? If so, how does it perform? And does everything save after a reboot? Since some of these installations don’t tend to save on a reboot, you basically start it up as if it’s a fresh operating system install.

No, you don't start a fresh operation system every boot. What you just described is the behavior of liveCD mode of Linux distros, when you "persistent/fake" install linux on a USB, during your normal usage you will perform all the I/O operations on/from the USB. I have to say that running a OS on your USB will likely kill your USB because the flash memory technology suffers and die with I/O operation. (We can say that USB shares the same problem of SSD, they are basically using the same technology).

Also regarding running an OS directly from RAM. That sounds like an interesting way of running an operating system. Since “loading” is basically just copying files from the hdd/ssd to RAM, does that mean that since everything is already on the RAM that things load up almost instantly? Also, since RAM doesn’t retain its data on a reboot/poweroff, where will everything be stored?

I have experienced OS running from RAM a long time ago so I don't remember clearly how it exactly works, but I can suppose that you can run your OS from RAM but at the same time perform I/O operation to get/store data. I mean I think that system & program binary files are ALL LOADED ON THE RAM AND NEVER UNLOADED meanwhile your data is likely put on your RAM and when you start the shutdown process it will unload the files inside the storage memory.