I've noticed this to hold over the years, almost always. I actually end up laughing a bit when I see cloud depictions in design specs these days because it's the same damn cloud every time.
They're not all the same. They're just trying to pad their list.
This story about finding assets in common across various forms of media is so old and it's always the same examples despite there being way more out there.
The only people lazier than those who used these assets are the ones parroting stories about them almost word for word.
I am curious which one you thought were a different texture. I was looking for the center brick with the cut corner and the one adjacent to it that touched a brick with a notch, and I was able to find these features on all of them.
I'm not sure lazy is entirely correct word. Using textures that are known to work well and make the world somewhat familiar to players of other games is probably the art version of "use boring tech".
