A system for reference-aware application recreation in a container deployment environment is presented. The system includes a reference detection module configured to detect and store one or more reference paths corresponding to each resource type of a plurality of resources in the container deployment environment; a resource ordering module configured to generate a recreation sequence by ordering the plurality of resources based on corresponding references at the reference paths, such that a referenced resource is recreated before the referring resource; and an application recreation module configured to recreate an application based on the recreation sequence. A related method is also presented.