Have cloned object pull original textures and mesh

Hello lovely people. Hope this is the right place to ask this...

I'm doing some object hacking and I was wondering if there's an easy way to clone an object so that it will just repository to the original object. I'm basically only interested in changing the code a bit so I don't see any reason why I can't do this. I have found tutorials to map textures to new meshes but that method does not make much sense when the original model is untouched and being referenced from the original object.

Anyway just wondering if I'm missing something or if I need to use the roundabout method. Hope someone can help!