As mentioned in aymerick/raymond#34, the following will panic:
{{#if wat[0].fnord}}wat{{/if}}
But so will this:
{{#if wat[0]}}wat{{/if}}
I believe the original issue is something of a red herring, since you're not supposed to access array elements like this in handlebars. The correct notation would be:
{{#if wat.[0]}}wat{{/if}}
Which does NOT panic if wat does not exist.
So the question isn't so much why a missing reference is panicking, it's why the bracket is being allowed (or not) when it should be (or not), thus causing a panic.