There was no A20 to gate on the 8086 (memory addresses would just wrap), but on the 286 the hardware didn’t wrap addresses even if you were in real mode. OK, so I’ve just looked up the CALL 5 ...

The 286s time as the new hotness was soon blasted away by the 386 with its support for virtual memory, so for most of us it remains as simply a faster way that we ran 8086 code for a few years.