Did rpc:call change behaviour in OTP-23.x or 24.x?

Specifically, I invoke the below function with rpc:call from an escript...

frob(Parent, Etc) ->
    link(Parent)
    % do something interesting
    ok.

(condensed example)

My escript dies with the following:

{"init terminating in do_boot",{#Ref<0.2297215750.597688321.118580>,return,ok}}
init terminating in do_boot ({,return,ok})

If I unlink from the pid before returning, it's all good. This has
worked perfectly since (afaict) R16, but broke at some point between
OTP-22.x and OTP-24.x (we skipped OTP-23.x)

We're using OTP-24.0.6