Offscreen Inertia aka: Tethercat Principle Other things being equal, any given character is probably doing what he was last seen doing. Especially if you hope he isn't. [...] The former Trope Namer: Gary Larson used to draw a cartoon called The Far Side. One of his most controversial cartoons was one he titled "Tethercat": Two dogs are playing tetherball with a rather stunned-looking cat. In his compilation/book The Prehistory Of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit, Larson mentioned his theory on why (in contrast to the Amusing Injuries of cartoons) some people REALLY hated this one panel — the two dogs never, ever stop playing tethercat. You see the cartoon, they're playing; you turn back to this one a few pages later, they're still playing; set the book down and come back tomorrow, they're still playing... Given the lack of information, there's no way you can say that the cat is going to escape any time soon, and the drawing doesn't make it look likely either; Larson suspected that if he'd included a caption about the cat escaping and coming back with a bazooka, he wouldn't have angered so many people.
TvTropes: Offscreen Inertia aka: Tethercat Principle
