Probably the order of the scripts that are ran in the page. You probably stopped the page-load before it got to the paywall script. This is why I like NoScript,

Probably the order of the scripts that are ran in the page. You probably stopped the page-load before it got to the paywall script. This is why I like NoScript, PrivacyBadger and AdBlock+ (some folks also like uBlock). Once you pinpoint the script and block it, you are trouble-free for a few months (until they change something on the script/paywall)