8 - Node::load is generating an object with circular reference which is crashing kint() and var_export() I have a content type with a Taxonomy term which has fields. When I try and load a node (or possibly nodes) of this type I get unexpected results. While debugging with kint() and var_export() I get errors about "circular references". Is this normal in Drupal 8 node structures? 

Or is there an underlying misconfig in the content type or taxonomy causing this problem?
Yes, this is normal and by design.

When you want to dump it, just use $node->toArray(). Then you get an array with the plain values. You can use those field names and properties again to access the values on the node object, e.g. $node-&gt;yourfield-&gt;value.