>A reference to a pointer still points to the same object.

Yes. That's what I want. I want a reference to the existing object, so that the object exists, and the reference points to the object that exists as well.

It's as the second example was setup in my code above. I'm effectively using that method presently, and it works, but it's clunky. I would like to have a way to store a binary object which is the explicit reference to the existing object, so I could reference it without having to use an intermediate variable name which is then set to the object reference itself. I'd like to remove that "middle man" if possible.