This makes sense. I’ve encountered this same exact issue in the past where I was unable to utilize the multi-reference field in this way and it caused me a lot of stress. Here’s what I remember (just about all I can share):
I believe I manually re-created the multi-reference fields in each entry which allowed me to reference them freely. I added the name of the parent category as a text field and a link to the parent category as a link. This can be repeated 2 or 3 times. Please note: I do not have the bandwidth to test if these can be referenced in the CMS as expected, but I don’t immediately see why it would not work.
I believe this would be less time consuming than totally duplicating the products across each CMS category (fewer fields to enter). Further, if you need to make edits to one product in the future you will save yourself a lot of headache from having to remember to make changes across the clones. Then, there’s the question of how SEO would handle All in all I highly recommend not duplicating the product pages if you don’t need to.
If referencing 1 of the multiple parent categories proves impossible, I recommend you break from the breadcrumb approach and simply list all of the categories each product appears in on all pages, for consistency. This lets you display the information you want without the multi-reference headache IMO.
Finally, another option is to just evaluate the time/value trade-off of using a generic word such as “Go Back” or “Category” and proceed with that… The user experience of seeing the category name may not ultimately be worth the stress here. I think the site would still work great even if it said Go Back.
Anyone with more experience please feel free to chime in or correct my thinking here.
Cheers,
Christopher