[amavect]

>plus weirdo stuff like the ability to hand out references to local data in functions that have already returned (which remains valid as long as you don't call the function again, which I think should be possible to enforce via a borrow checker).

The C programming language supports this with the static keyword. Further calls may overwrite the pointed data. I have played with allocating fixed-size data in static locals, but I always found that allocating in the caller does the same job better. For example, compare strerror() with strerror_s(). (A sensible strerror implementation should return a pointer to static immutable data, but the Standard doesn't specify it.)

A procedural language can achieve a statically bounded call stack by restricting self recursion, mutual recursion, and function pointers. I struggle to imagine how a language without a call stack could perform differently or better.