Nothing disappears, they just stop. If it's a page full of them, you may have to hit Esc more than once, as the button won't work until the GIF is fully loaded on the page. You have to reload to ...

Here's how to put a stop to the show, browser by browser. (We even placed an animated GIF on this very page down under the IE section that you can use to test things out. We're just that nice.) ...