It will not work with use strict!

It won't? Coulda fooled me.

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    sub foo {
        our $bar;
        $bar = "Hi";
        return *bar;
    }

    my $foo = foo();

    print $$foo, "\n";

    __OUTPUT__

    Hi
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Not that I disagree with the rest of your post, though. This type of thing is odd, but it's not disallowed by strict by any means.