node base ability to link certain layers within a reference system.

It would be great to be able to i.e. connect a mask to different layers on an image. I imagine a seperate window that shows all the layers of an image where the user has the ability to connect certain layers to different inputs to a certain layer. This way you could use one mask to connect to multiple layers that don’t need to be stacked or grouped, and you would be able to change just one mask with simply affecting multiple parts of a complex comp.
This could obviously work with any type of overlays, noises and so forth like in a material editor of blender/c4d.