I've lost track of how many times I've looked at the trivia section of a wikia and seen "trivia" that boil down to "X and Y are similar". Thanks, I've noticed cus I have eyes and/or the ability to read and compare descriptions.
My main bugbear is when this is used to imply influence, cus you that's not how influence works. (You kinda need to show, at minimum, that the author was aware of the other thing at time of writing for speculation to be even viable.)
@Owlor God, this drives me crazy too. "The sun rises in S03E08 of Better Call Saul. This is clearly a reference to Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' BRAVO, VINCE!"
The absolute nadir of this for me was when someone INSISTED Gravity Falls took place in the Steven Universe continuity... because they spotted a fucking NFPA 704 Diamond on a fire extinguisher in the Mystery Shack and mistook it for the Diamonds' sigil. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
I HATE fan-theory logic.
@Owlor It's also kinda sadly funny watching Homestar fans debate "which [one] artist Sloshy Is Supposed To Be." You'll find people who absolutely *insist* it's The Smiths And Nobody Else, Pavement And Nobody Else -- I have no idea why "inspired by a variety of shoegazy dream pop bands" is such a hard concept to grasp for... people of a certain mentality?
Or when two different cartoon reference the same classical music piece/old movie/old TV show/ whatever, and some kid who's never seen the original (or ANY OTHER CARTOON THAT ALSO REFS THE ORIGINAL) thinks one cartoon is reffing the other.
@zebratron2084 Oh I REMEMBER that
Ah the Diamonds, known for... manufacturing fire extinguishers?
I understand that most of the time people making these edits are prolly literal children, but if you are gonna comment on the interconnectivity of media, it helps to have a reference pool larger than one book and ten cartoons.