An NFT could work like that, though. There's nothing stopping someone from writing an NFT smart contract that directs a percentage (of any size, including 100%)

An NFT could work like that, though. There's nothing stopping someone from writing an NFT smart contract that directs a percentage (of any size, including 100%) of future sales to the initial cause. The NFT standard itself is quite basic, nearly every NFT people talk about are controlled by smart contracts that expand on the standard.