... this creates a circular reference, which probably won't be a problem ...

It also creates a circular, i.e., infinite, execution loop, which probably will be a problem.

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"sub names { print qq{@_}; }
 ;;
 my %dispatch;
 %dispatch = (
   circular => sub {
     names('fu', 'bar');
     sleep 1;
     $dispatch{circular}->();
     },
   straight => sub {
     names('a', 'ok');
     },
   );
 ;;
 $dispatch{straight}->();
 $dispatch{circular}->();
"
a ok
fu bar
fu bar
fu bar
fu bar
Terminating on signal SIGINT(2)
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