Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5513888-20130903031231/@comment-1430834-20130903063314

Well, it may be possible since The Programmer is merely an NPC, but there are no clues that connect him to Otonashi. All we know about Otonashi is that he came to the afterlife without the knowledge that his heart was later transplanted to Kanade before the start of the series.

The issue lies in the fact that we have very little information to work on, sadly.