Once in a hotel dining-room, I said, rather too loudly, "I loathe prunes."
"So do I," came an unexpected six-year-old voice from another table.
Sympathy was instantaneous. Neither of us thought it funny. We both knew that prunes are far too nasty to be funny. That is the proper meeting between man and child as independent personalities.
"So do I," came an unexpected six-year-old voice from another table.
Sympathy was instantaneous. Neither of us thought it funny. We both knew that prunes are far too nasty to be funny. That is the proper meeting between man and child as independent personalities.
— C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing For Children"
Two characters, strangers or hostile to each other, accidentally discover a common thing. It can be an interest, a past experience or a background, but it foments friendship between them. For dramatic purposes, this is often between extremely different characters.
It can also mark the deepening of an existing relationship.
Lies can sometimes backfire when another character thinks it's this trope; see I Am One of Those, Too.
When the commonality is a Dark and Troubled Past, then Trauma Deduction may come into play.
Compare Fire-Forged Friends; note that merely finding they were both soldiers or the like is this, though if they fought in some of the same battles, it may shade into that. For much more extensive commonalities, see Birds of a Feather. Also compare Lonely Together, Alliance of the Alienated, and Opening-Up Moment. May overlap "Notice Me" Desire.
Contrast "Not So Different" Remark and Opposites Attract. Supertrope of Bonding over Missing Parents, Surprisingly Shared Secret, and A Shared Suffering. The lack of this drives Joins to Fit In. Examples that do not precede a friendship may go under The One Thing I Don't Hate About You.
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Examples:
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Advertising
- Played for laughs in this
advert for Uber, in which Robert De Niro and Asa Butterfield form a bond based on their shared interest in eating food and going places.
Audio Plays
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who story "Echoes of Grey", Zoe falls into conversation with a young woman called Ali who, like her, was a lonely child prodigy working in an isolated base. Subverted when it's revealed that Ali was nothing of the kind; her backstory was faked to gain Zoe's trust.
Comic Books
- Aquaman: Black Manta, an African-American supervillain, has on occasion exploited solidarity to get other Black people to help him, most notably in the Silver Age when he conned a bunch of black men to serve as his henchmen and even get surgery to breathe underwater by claiming he was trying to create a Black homeland underwater. It’s clearly a trick, since Manta doesn’t care about racism or feel any kind of kinship with other Black people.
- In Astro City, Samaritan, who severely feels the pressure to keep on saving the world, twice spontaneously offers assistance to superpowered characters who don't want to fight or commit crime, but whom supervillains try to capture to exploit.
- Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees
- Since he was a child, Nigel had always felt that Sam was special and interesting, not like the other people in Woodbrook. This is most likely due to some subconscious recognition of their mutual insanity.
- Subverted when Nigel thinks that as soon as Sam learns he's been serial killing in an effort to impress her she'll be overjoyed and eagerly accept him as an associate. Sam is not and does not.
- Sonic and friends team up with the Justice League in DC × Sonic the Hedgehog. Shadow, however, isn't interested with partnering up with them. Batman steps in and asks Shadow "Who was it? The one you couldn't protect." Shadow and Batman learn that they both lost people close to them (Martha and Thomas Wayne for Batman, Maria Robotnik for Shadow). Batman tells Shadow he won't allow that to happen to anyone else, which is enough to convince Shadow to work together with him.
- How to Be Ace: In Chapter 3, Rebecca tries dating Tom over their mutual preference for quiet bonding over loud parties, but Rebecca quickly calls it off due to being overwhelmed by partying and drinking, which they only did to try fitting in. Then in Chapter 4, they reconnect over their same sense of humor and feelings of being overwhelmed, which gives Rebecca the courage to open up to him about their OCD. They soon fall in love with him and try dating him again, but they still run out on him the moment he sensually cuddles them.
- Magneto: Testament: Max, a Jewish boy, gets a crush on a Roma girl named Magda. This gets Max mocked as "trash liking trash" by a racist fellow student. In Nazi Germany, both the Jews and Roma are despised, while later marked for death during the Holocaust. Max bonds with Magda over their shared suffering, and they manage to break out of Auschwitz together. Stories which were set later show they got married and had children together.
- In Marvel's Voices: Comunidades, Eva and Germán bond over being Mexican-American students of magic at Strange Academy.
- In The Red Star, the old soldier comments to Maya that soldiers' common knowledge of war means a common bond.
- School For Extraterrestrial Girls: Tara forms a connection with Misako upon finding out that the latter also grew up thinking she was human, unknowingly wearing a human disguise bracelet 24/7, and was raised by someone other than her biological parents (Tara had been kidnapped by two people who pretended to be her parents, while Misako spent all her life before coming to the eponymous school in foster care).
- Spider-Man has formed a lasting friendship with the X-Men over the years due to both parties having a serious case of Hero with Bad Publicity.
- In The Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion, Diego and Luther fall victim to a surreal, telepathic bacteria from which they can only free themselves if they discover a point of similarity. This seems impossible at first, but it turns out they do share one very important feeling.
"I never just...it never feels like...the right time to say-"
[Luther thinks of Allison]
[Diego thinks of Vanya]
"-I love you."
Comic Strips
- An early Bloom County strip has the flightless penguin Opus bond with wheelchair user Cutter John over "useless limbs".
- In one tech-related comic strip of a Mexican newspaper, it presented two characters: a stereotypical Nerd and a Jock as complete opposites destined to be eternal enemies, then the jock says "I like SpongeBob SquarePants", and the nerd "Me too!". The next panels show them laughing and bonding.
- In Prickly City, Winslow wonders why they are friends when they disagree on everything. Carmen observes they do agree, on one thing: they like being friends.
Films — Animation
- Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper: Anneliese and Erika form this, first over the fact that they are nearly identical and then when they realize that they are both unable to do what they really want because of external circumstances—Erika cannot pursue her dream career as a singer due to crippling debt, while Anneliese must forsake her passion for science and her love for Julian because of her duty to the kingdom.
- A Bug's Life: After the "warriors" save Dot, Atta and Flik bond over how they feel the colony is always watching them, waiting for them to screw up.
- In the animated adaptation of Charlotte's Web, Wilbur tells the runt of a newly-hatched group of goslings that he started life as a runt too and that it's nothing to feel bad about. This launches all the barnyard animals into a song where they bond over all the things they have in common despite their superficial differences.
Animals: We've got lots in common where it really counts
Where it really counts, we've got large amounts
What we look like doesn't count an ounce
We've got lots in common where it really counts! - In Frozen II, Kristoff gets a taste of it when he meets Ryder, a Northuldran with an identical love for reindeer. They immediately become fast friends, and Ryder even tries to help Kristoff propose to Anna.
- Monsters University: When Mike takes his Oozma Kappa teammates to Monsters, Inc. to watch the scarers in action, he and Sulley start to bond over their shared hobby of collecting Scarer Cards.
Mike: You collected Scare Cards, huh?
Sulley: Yep, 450 of 'em.
Mike: Impressive. I have 6,000 still in mint condition. But you know, 450's pretty good, too. - Rabbids Invasion: Mission to Mars: Olivia decides to help put Scribbles on the mission to Mars since she herself always wanted help humanity explore the stars since her childhood.
- Storks: Tulip seeing her own reflection in the baby's pod convinces her to help the baby, as she knows what it's like not to be delivered.
- In Strange Magic, Marianne and The Bog King bond over how much they hate love since both of them have had bad experiences with love.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario and Donkey Kong, who start out as rivals, start to bond and turn more into friendly rivals when they find out that they have similar problems with wanting to earn their fathers' respect.
- In Tangled, Rapunzel appeals to the thugs of the Snuggly Duckling: haven't they ever had a dream? They reveal a lot of dreams—mostly Real Men Wear Pink—and even help her and Flynn escape.
I've got a dream
She's got a dream
He's got a dream
They've got a dream
We've got a dream
So our differences ain't really that extreme - Happens a couple of times in Turning Red:
- When Meilin sees that her mother's astral self is a teenager, and hears Ming's anguished confession, she realizes just how mentally tortured her mother has been all these years, and why. She also realizes just how much alike they are. Not a word is said, or needed; Mei simply gets it, and her reaction is automatic. In just a few seconds, she and her mother form an entirely new bond over their shared experiences, and that becomes the basis for their new and better relationship as seen in the ending.
- After spending most of the movie at odds with each other, Mei and her friends manage to find common ground with Tyler through their shared love of 4*Town.
- Wish Dragon: Din and Li Na meet when they get kicked out of their respective classes for drawing dragons, which allows them to first bond. They become true friends when Li Na throws a dumpling at a kid who mocked Din for his mom being late to pick him up. She's had experience with a father who couldn't always pick her up on time, and they hold hands to walk home together.
- In Wreck-It Ralph, Ralph eventually decides to help Vanellope because her situation is almost identical to (if not worse than) his - from living in the dump ostracized by others to seeing the medal as their means of finally getting their due - and they bond over their shared dreams.
- In Ralph Breaks the Internet, when Vanellope claims to be a princess, the other Disney Princesses are skeptical at first, until they bond over shared similarities, notably that Vanellope, like many of the princesses, doesn't have a mother.
- Rapunzel: And now for the million-dollar question; do people assume all your problems got solved because a big strong man showed up?
Vanellope: Yes! What is up with that?
All: She is a princess!
- Zootopia (2016): Judy and Nick start to become friends when they bond over the fact that both have had experiences with their dreams clashing against the unfair stereotypes society holds against them.
Music
- Played for Laughs in Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's," where an attempt at a Commonality Connection comes off more like Damned by Faint Praise. The singer's girlfriend wants to break up because she feels they don't have anything in common anymore and have drifted apart, and when he attempts to counter this claim, the only thing they can agree on is that they "both kind of liked" Breakfast at Tiffany's.
- Zucchero: The song "Hey Man" tells about Zucchero having recently gone through a breakup, and as he walks across a busy street he sees a man who is going through a similar situation. He offers him some company so they can sing together and cope with the mutual sorrow.
- Near the end of the Fraggle Rock themed video for "Do it Anyway" by Ben Folds Five, the nerdy security guy turns out to have a tattoo of the same Gorg pop singer that's on the bored receptionist's t-shirt. The next time we see them, they're making out.
Radio
- Parodied in a John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme sketch, in which John plays a guy who precedes every sentence with "the thing about me is..." and Simon Kane plays the friend who vainly tries to explain that these are universal experiences. John's character goes on to describe this girl he met and the amazing stuff they have in common:
John: We both like films...
Simon: Everyone likes films.
John: ...we both like going to the pub...
Simon: You met in a pub.
John: ...we're both into food...
Simon: All humans eat food to stay alive.
John: And then, like, really specific stuff. Okay, so my favourite film, ever, is Groundhog Day, okay, and I said that, and it turns out that it's one of her top ten comedy films as well! What are the chances of that?
Simon: HIGH!! The chances of that are high. Everyone likes that film, it's a good film. The only way that film would be a useful way of identifying kinship is if you both hated it.
John: Well, I dunno, maybe you're right. But the thing about me is, I'm really good at identifying and exaggerating perceived communalities with people in order to foster warm relationships. That's just the thing about me.
Simon: Yeah, that actually is the thing about you.
Roleplay
- Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
- Edward became friends with both Ivan and Destiny due to being disabled; Ivan also has a disability, which led to the two meeting in the hospital, while Destiny's father is disabled and thus she's heavily involved in the community.
- Ivy and Luna became friends, despite their wildly different personalities, due to their shared love of video games and anime. It was Luna's abandonment of those interests, out of a fear of being seen as uncool, that caused their friendship to drift apart for a while.
- Lenore and Vivian, like the two above, couldn't be more different from each other. However, their shared interest in Dungeons & Dragons brought them together, and the two have been thick as thieves ever since.
- The Doomy Adventures of Irken Doominess: Shortly after meeting, Ryn and Melissa quickly became good friends because they are both insane killer aliens.
Theatre
- In John Milton's Comus, the Spirit urges that Sabrina will be glad to add the Lady — she will be "swift to aid a virgin, such as was herself, in hard-besetting need."
- When Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry Uri Savir and Finance Minister for the Palestine Liberation Organization Ahmed Qurie step away from the peace negotiations to take a walk through the frigid Norwegian countryside in Oslo, they discover that they both have daughters named Maya. This connection brings into focus why they're fighting so hard for peace, and opens the door for them to see each other as allies in the process of hashing out the negotiations (rather than enemies at cross purposes).
- In RENT, Roger and Mimi's romance is cemented when they realize they both are HIV-positive after tiptoeing around it for the first act.
Video Games
- Advance Wars:
- The Perky Gothic Evil Genius Lash and The Strategic Teen Genius Sonja form a connection over their similarly analytical and manipulative minds. Lash is enthused while Sonja is not happy about the idea (Though Sonja warms to her in the final mission), but they never-the-less work well enough together to get a modest 105% power boost when paired together.
Lash: Tee hee hee! Hey, Sonja! Your last mission is with me! Man, total drag for you, huh?
Sonja: Is that what you think? I beg to differ. I may not care for your personality, but your battle skills are unmatched! - Adder and Koal, despite never actually meeting in canon, get this in the non-canon War Room and Vs Modes if paired together to poke fun at Koal effectively being a Moveset Clone of Adder with a few very minor changes. They get a decent 110% power boost and, if their victory quotes are to be believed, have a serious bromance going on due to their almost identical personalities:
Adder: Heh heh heh... What a pair we make!
Koal: Heh heh heh... Like water and fish.
- The Perky Gothic Evil Genius Lash and The Strategic Teen Genius Sonja form a connection over their similarly analytical and manipulative minds. Lash is enthused while Sonja is not happy about the idea (Though Sonja warms to her in the final mission), but they never-the-less work well enough together to get a modest 105% power boost when paired together.
- AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative: Played for Laughs; this game partners up the new hero, the perky young Blood Knight Mizuki, with Aiba, the highly logical investigative partner of the previous game's protag, Date. And if there's anything that makes the duo close, it's there mutual vitriol towards Date. The two will always dream up of excuses to kick his ass on the spot, which is not that hard with what a Manchild he is. Of course, Mizuki is Date's kid, so it's generally in good fun for her and Aiba.
Mizuki: "Aiba, permission to shoot [Date]?"
Aiba: "Granted." - In a conversation in Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition, Gorian's Ward and Neera have the option to bond over how out of place they feel in the huge city of Athkatla. Neera grew up in the High Forest and Gorian's Ward grew up in the isolated library/fortress of Candlekeep, so they both realize that neither of them really had much experience with any of the traits of city life.
- The main party members of Baldur's Gate III all have one thing in common: they got abducted by the mind flayers, and now they have mind flayer tadpoles in their brains. While they all come from different backgrounds (and two of them would like to see the other dead in a ditch), they all need to work together to prevent themselves from being turned into evil psychic squid people.
- In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Pizza turns out to have quite a bit in common with Chicory because they both have similar thoughts concerning their inadequacies and self-worth. It's what allows Pizza to actually bond with Chicory.
- Coffee Talk 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly:
- In Silver and Amanda's bad ending, Baileys bonds with Silver over leaving their birth families behind to start a new life. Baileys decided to abandon his elven family due to their disapproval of him dating Lua, a succubus, while Silver left his alien hive to live undercover as a human and help other aliens who are in hiding from the government.
- Rachel and Lucas bond over how they overcame racism to become the celebrities they are in the present. Rachel had to deal with the wrong assumption that all nekomimis are hired only because of their cuteness, while Lucas, a satyr, struggled with being stereotyped as a reckless party animal and being the subject of cruel pranks.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, the Warden and Alistair have this to bring them together because, as of the end of the prologue, they are the only two Grey Wardens left in all of Ferelden. They may have other things in common, depending on which background the player chose and how they elect to play the character, but no matter what they always have this to bond them.
- Dorian and Solas, in Dragon Age: Inquisition, aren't exactly best buddy material due to personality clash and the bad blood between their respective people; however, they are able to find this through their mutual interest in ancient magical techniques and artifacts.
- Bellara and Davrin in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are both Dalish and despite them connecting with different aspects (Bellara is a Genki Girl who is more interested in elven archeology while Davrin is calm and collected man who feels more in line with the hunting aspects), developed a friendship due to their shared culture, both understanding the hardship of elven people and their mutual feelings about stopping the Evanuris for the sake of their people. Ironically, this makes them the first elven party members in the franchise's history who actually like each other.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII: After Cloud has recovered from Heroic BSoD and gets his memories back in order, there are a few optional scenes between Cloud and Yuffie in which they bond over their mutual problems with motion sickness.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, Balbanes Beoulve was fond of teaching his children how to turn a piece of grass into a reed flute, and those children taught it to their friends in order to kill time when they were bored. After the Lion War is in full swing and nobody can trust anybody, you'd be surprised who you find playing a piece of grass like a flute...
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
- Both Lorenz and Ferdinand have a deep appreciation for tea, so much so that this shared appreciation forms the backbone of all of their support conversations.
- If recruited to the Black Eagles, Lysithea shares a dark secret with Edelgard: they had both been kidnapped and experimented upon by those who slither in the dark, and those experiments have cut their lifespans short. As such, they both seek to accomplish great deeds with what precious little time they have: Lysithea wants to find any way to leave her mark on the world (and is insistent that she not be treated like a child despite her age, because she doesn't even know if she'll live to adulthood), while Edelgard seeks to conquer Fodlan and dismantle the Crest-obsessed society that led to the tragedy befalling her family.
- Horizon Forbidden West depicts an incredibly monetized, high-tech future in which there are fandom apartment blocks; a game franchise built Colossus Bay, a housing development exclusively for "Trials of Titans" fans. The builders essentially exploited this trope for financial gain.
As every neighbor will be a dedicated fan like you, you will never walk alone again.
- Kitty Powers' Matchmaker: If your client talks about a mutual interest with their date, they'll immediately click and remark what a "coincidence" it is, unaware that you set them up because of it.
- In Legends of Runeterra, the CCG spin-off of League of Legends, arch-enemies Darius and Garen are able to find one thing they have in common if they're both played on the same side. It's hilarious(ly awkward).
Darius: I, uh... like your pauldrons.
Garen: Yours are... also acceptable. - Love, Ghostie:
- Sky and Gerard bond over their surprising love for art, with Sky advising Gerard that it's okay not to be perfect in art at first.
- Felix and Mina discover and bond over their secret love for anime because they just happen to have the same Embarrassing Password: "ISECRETLYLOVEANIME".
- Noir and Chamel bond over their desire to stand out of the crowd: Noir dares to be different from hundred other sheep who blindly follow trends, while Chamel cosplays to both stand out and blend in at the same time by pretending to be someone they're not.
- In Mass Effect, a discussion with Ashley reveals that she and Shepard had the same drill instructor, one Gunny Ellison, during basic training. This comes up after Ashley says a word Shepard recognizes.
Shepard: Don’t tell me you had Gunny Ellison! He’s the only one who uses that word to describe shirking duty.
Ashley: Oh, Lord. You went to the Macapá boot camp too? - No Umbrellas Allowed: At first, Nari isn't keen on Bokho "trying to one-up" her fantasy artwork with his amateur paintings, but over time, she starts to like the competition, and they bond over their shared passion for art and desire for freedom from AVAC's oppression. They eventually collaborate on a painting symbolizing their friendship, and Bokho even decides to join Nari in the Bunker of Freedom. Unfortunately, he gets scammed and attacked by the Stabilizer before he can enter while Nari gets Fixed for exacting revenge on Mr. Gong by setting the Bunker on fire, leaving their painting unfinished.
- Persona 5:
- Many of the Thieves have suffered from being ostracized some way; the Shujin students gossiping about Joker's criminal record, Ryuji being treated as a pariah due to Kamoshida and the track team and people spreading nasty, untrue rumors about Ann. Ann lampshades this during a shared meal.
Ann: It almost feels like I've known you all forever... do you think it's because our backgrounds are so similar?
Ryuji: (semi-jokingly) Well, it sure ain't 'cause of anything good. - This is part of the reason why Haru is fairly close to Makoto. Aside from both of them being in third year senpais to the rest of the Thieves, both of them have a loved one (Makoto's older sister Sae and Haru's father Kunizaku) whose hearts they wished to change.
- Many of the Thieves have suffered from being ostracized some way; the Shujin students gossiping about Joker's criminal record, Ryuji being treated as a pariah due to Kamoshida and the track team and people spreading nasty, untrue rumors about Ann. Ann lampshades this during a shared meal.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The League Club dialogue between Poppy and Amarys, both of whom are Steel-type Pokémon specialists themselves, in The Indigo Disk Downloadable Content is all about the two of them bonding over their shared love of Steel-type Pokemon they have.
- Roots of Pacha:
- Reese is a painter who wishes to share her talent with others, especially children because she and Ron couldn't have any. After the Art Station is built, she bonds with Nari (a potter) and Krak (a wood sculptor) over their artistic talents; she even helps Krak paint his first successful sculpture in his first Hangout Event. Reese is also more than happy to be your child's nanny and teach them painting when they're in school.
- After their tribes put their differences aside and reunite, Vallah is surprised that Krak is a wood carver like her and smitten by him.
- In Ruined King, several of the disparate main cast find they have things in common. Ahri and Yasuo share loneliness and self-loathing; Ahri and Pyke share a certain animalistic nature which can't be controlled; Braum and Illaoi share the joy of living in the moment; Illaoi and Captain Fortune share uncertainties about what they, as leaders, are 'supposed' to do...
- Sticky Business:
- Dawn and Daisy meet at a chance encounter at the café, and they bond over being uni students and their love for your stickers. They later open their own art shop, with Daisy doing the art and Dawn managing the business.
- To combat loneliness, Shirley takes up paper crafting and joins a book club, where she finds two other ladies also into her hobby. She shares her love for your stickers with them and also starts her own crafting workshop for them.
- After being discharged from the hospital, Max decides to stay in contact with his new friends he made there, for they're also skateboarders.
- In Book of Shadows, it takes Sasha a while to find a new friend with your grimoire stickers, but she and Ellie hit it off with their mutual love for magic and witches.
- Sunless Sea: One random event has the people of Mutton Island be exposed as a Cannibal Clan mid-dinner, forcing your Captain to flee or fight their way out. If your Captain is already the Unaccountably Peckish sort, you can skip the skill challenge and simply load up a plate, have a friendly meal, and slip away before the Navy descend on them.
- Super Robot Wars X sees a quick bond form between Lelouch and Ange over their similar circumstances. As someone who knows the pain of being exiled royalty with a crippled sister, as well as having a penchant for ruthless tactics himself, Lelouch quickly becomes one of Ange's greatest allies.
Visual Novels
- In BUSTAFELLOWS, this is how Teuta gets the Fixer group to warm up to her. She shared that her older brother was mysteriously killed and they never found his body. His death continues to affect and influence her current journalist job, even to present time. This resonates in particularly with Mozu, Shu and Crow, who have all been impacted by the death or disappearance of a loved one.
- Morgan and Amy from Double Homework share exactly two things, according to Morgan: a birthday, and a real name (Morgan’s real name is Amy). The two of them form a friendship that far outlasts the end of the summer.
- Morgan from of the Devil is a self-centered woman who mostly works as a lawyer because she enjoys messing with people, but Serra rapidly turns her into a protective parent when she mentions that she watched tons of movies and TV for the same reason as Morgan: to learn how to display emotions.
- In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Phoenix convinces a member of La Résistance to trust him by showing his defense attorney badge. Though their situations and countries of origin are drastically different, they both believe in something greater than themselves.
- Spirit Hunter: NG:
- Akira's cousin Ami is a cute young girl, while Maruhashi is a Gonk lackey for the Yakuza. They hit it off quickly due to their shared interest in idol singer Momo Kuruse, which Akira is surprised by.
- According to her character profile, the reason Yuri met and befriended Kaoru (Momo Kuruse's secret identity) was that she too was aiming to become an idol.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: In "Candy Carrier Chaos!", Pomni and Gummigoo bond over the fact that they're both going through existential crises and feeling like their existences are pointless, though Pomni does note that her issue isn't exactly the same.
- JaidenAnimations: Jaiden spoofs this in her "Flirting & My Stories" video. After admitting her anxiety (yet again), she breaks into this skit...
- RWBY: Yang expresses her unhappiness over Blake's absence by stating that Weiss can't comprehend the loneliness of growing up in a broken home that forced her to parent Ruby because the surviving parent became too emotionally unavailable. Weiss comments that her father ruined her tenth birthday by revealing he only married to obtain the family name and company, resulting in her having a dysfunctional, alcoholic mother and an unloving, abusive father. She explains to Yang that everyone experiences loneliness in their own individual way, and that Blake will have her own form of loneliness, too.
- Terri Starstrike: Jack and Terrina are both Jotuzons who have a passionate love for humans and learning about their inventions and their artifacts. The two both share a flamboyant fashion style, are very musically-inclined, and also share a habit for creating jewelry and DIY art out of human-sized trinkets.
Web Videos
- Honest Trailers: The trailer for The Force Awakens has Jon Bailey (Epic Voice Guy) and Gannon Nickel (Epic Voice Guy Sr.) become best friends after they realize they have the exact same list for their "best" and "worst" moments from the movie, despite disagreeing on every other point.
- Ultimately defied in The Nostalgia Critic's "Top 11 F-Ups Part 3" when he and Douchey McNitpick learn they both love sugar-frosted burrito-stuffed hot pockets:
Douchey: Oh, I love those! With the extra lard on the side?
Critic: Yeah, I know! And the creamy buttery taken from real liposuctions?
Douchey: And the side of oil found in most suntan lotions?
Critic: Those are the best.
Douchey: They are the best!
Critic: I love them.
Douchey: I love them, too—I MEAN, OOOOOOOOH! How dare we almost find something in common! - Sword Art Online Abridged makes both Kirito and Kayaba into this who both complain about the other players of the game as annoying pissants, considers themselves a massive cut above normal people due to their intellect, but what really clinches the deal for Kayaba is that Kirito is as big of a Movie Nerd as he is, and they both love to spout movie quotes that nobody else gets; it was one of the many things that allowed for Kirito to deduce Kayabas' secret identity as Heathcliff.
Kirito: You're the only one I've ever met in this game who makes as many movie references as I do.
Kayaba: Ah yes, I guess I should have known that would... Wait. You get my references?!
Kirito: Um, yes. I just remembered-
Kayaba: "There Can Be Only One."
Kirito: Oh, ah Highlander.
Kayaba: "Well who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
Kirito: Duck Soup Marx Brothers, 1933.
Kayaba: "DRY LAND IS NOT A MYTH! I HAVE SEEEEN IIITTTT!!"
Kirito: Ah, getting tricky are we? While that line is famously attributed to the 1995 film WaterWorld, it is never actually spoken in the movie.
Kayaba: ...Hot damn, you're the real deal. - Mystery Incorporated (2022): Velma reaches out to Freddie because she knows what it's like to lose a parent and because he's looking up demonology like her mother does. While Fred seems to appreciate the thought he correctly points out that her having experienced grief doesn't mean she understands his grief.
- Welcome to the Table:
- Hawai'i and Florida are happily surprised by how much they have in common, with similar grievances with tourists and ineffective infrastructure, and similar climates and local foods. It also helps that they both love messing with the Government.
- Similarly, Alaska and Maine bond over wildlife, weather, and a love of nature, to the point that grumpy and insular Alaska grudgingly offers to start talking about "... the lower 47".
Florida: I think Alaska found his brother bear!
Real Life
- C. S. Lewis recounts in Surprised By Joy when he went to visit a sick neighbor when he was a boy. He didn't even remember why, but when he was there, the other boy had a book of Norse Mythology. When Lewis exclaimed "What, you like that too?", they spent the rest of the visit poring over the book and forming a steadfast friendship.
- Psychologists found that in an experiment where people could punish their partners for errors, if you told the people that the (invisible) partner had a thumbprint that was classified in the same group as them, they would punish this partner less. Even if the person doing the punishing was a textbook narcissist.
- Starring together on Star Trek: The Original Series, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy became friends in no small part thanks to learning they were both Jewish (Nimoy had an Orthodox Jewish upbringing, Shatner had a Reform Jewish upbringing). Through various ups and downs, their friendship lasted almost 50 years.
- Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson formed an Intergenerational Friendship partly due to their shared love of weed.
- Cops who play the "Good Cop" in interrogation will often start off "befriending" the suspect by chatting with them about sports, etc., or claiming to understand their feelings of anger towards the victim. Many suspects will inevitably slip up.
- Similarly, this is a tactic used to survive being held hostage or taken prisoner by enemy soldiers. Enforcing your humanity to them to elicit sympathy and sharing similarities such as children you both have or even mutual interests makes it harder for them to mistreat you since they begin to connect with you on a personal level and no longer merely see you as "prisoners." Even something as simple as looking a gunman in the eye makes it more difficult for them to shoot you by evoking this.
