It is interesting. It is not excepted that everything has gone before and that everything is a hybrid of the past; if that is a known reference or not.
Of course, those influences to their original creators had to come from somewhere. I guess you can look at it two ways. Either that designers in the past had lots of free reign and created much more imaginative design, where today we are constantly linked to what has gone before; or that there is this previous body of work, whos creators got their influences else where.
With anything now, they are the most often followed routes and then the less so.
Logotype work is a more direct niche, so I not at all surprised that logos will begin to look like each other, intentional or not.
Fact is, one of the ways many of us come into design, is by seeing great design and wanting to emulate it (not copy!); our deconstruction of this design work gives us a design sense; what works and what does not.
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