While "goto &sub" is an interesting way to go about this, the cautiousness/conciousness needed in the twiddling of @_, and the oddity of its syntax are not what I am looking for.

If a change in the "goto &sub" syntax would meet your requirements, you might have a look at source filters (see also Filter::Simple). At first glance it doesn't seem like it should be too hard to make a macro (call it tail_return) which transforms something like...

tail_return sub(a,b,c);
[download]

...into the proper goto syntax.