So you want to be able to do something like this:

my $ref = {thing => 'value', otherthing => 'other'};
%alias_to_ref = ;# insert magical code here
                 # to create a hash which will
                 # still modify $ref

$alias_to_ref{thing} = 'newvalue';

print $ref->{thing};
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And have that output 'newvalue'? If that is what you want, you probably could do it with a tied hash. See Below:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my($ash) = {thing => 'other', and => 'antoher'};

my(%hash);

tie %hash, 'MyHash', $ash;

$hash{thing} = 'new';

print $ash->{thing}."\n";

package MyHash;
require Tie::Hash;
@MyHash::ISA = qw(Tie::StdHash);

sub STORE
{
    my $me = shift;
    my $key = shift;
    $me->{$key} = shift;
}

sub TIEHASH
{
    my $package = shift;
    my $ref = shift;
    return bless($ref, $package);
}
[download]

This outputs 'new'.