Draw a picture, showing a box with a name for a named variable, and containing the root of an arrow that points to another box if it's a pointer. The real value will have the number or whatever in the box, not an arrow to another box.

Now when you assign something to another variable, you can add that to the diagram and see exactly what level of pointer-ing is involved.

I don't know if the "master hash" is bad. It depends on the overall design. Moving forward, you might further refactor it.