Specifically, you will notice that certain OLE variables contain multiple nested references that quite literally recurse indefinitely, or cross-reference structures and objects that you may not expect.

Very true. But there is a way around that. You can set the $Data::Dumper::Maxdepth-variable to a numeric value >0, so that Dumper() will not recurse infinitly.

use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Maxdepth=3;
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