Common Villagers that keep showing up?

[keybug55]

I'm not talking about overlapping dreamies, I'm talking about villagers that it seems like everyone has (mainly to start out with)

For me, Eugene keeps popping up in EVERYONE'S town. I know like 4 people including myself that either had him as a starting camper or has visited sometime after

Also I had Elvis at some point before I gave him away to someone and he just kept showing up during a Nook Mile Ticket excursion

 

[Jam86]

me and all 2 of my friends started with agnes on our islands
my friends like her but i'm not a fan

 

[Rosewater]

I've seen a lot of mentions of Lionel, Leopold, and Bubbles and I've had all of them too.

 

[marea]

Rodney and Quillson seem to show up so much as first campers. It is just random, or the game wants to tease you XD

 

[Bioness]

The only common villagers are those that people will actively seek out as well as possibly the ones whose personality is set.

What you are experiencing is known as the "birthday problem". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Basically when randomly selected the chance that two items (or birthdays) will be the same in a limited set appears really low. In the Birthday case, you only need 23 people to have a 50% chance that two will share a birthday.

You see those villagers a lot because you see many towns and the human brains likes to pick out patterns, even if they aren't there.

 

[Lilybells]

In the first couple weeks of playing, a bunch of my friends and I all had Merengue!

 

[Sloom]

i mean, since nmt islands sort by species first before villager, basically everyone under the sun has had octavian, marina or zucker

 

[tonkuri]

for me, spike and naomi showed up in my mystery islands allll the time for some odd reason. i think generally people see the octopuses a lot though

i found a lot of people started with snake, i actually started with hamlet and ursula and no one seems to mention them lmao

 

[Hatsushimo]

Both of my best friends IRL started with -- and elected to keep -- Katt. Needless to say, I've gotten to know her pretty well, heheh.

 

[driftwoodisle]

Among my friend group Tipper is kinda infamous. I'm pretty sure 3/4 of us have had her. Zell is also pretty common too.

 

[Blueskyy]

Merengue showed up in the first set of mystery islands for a lot of people, myself included. I moved her out though. Too boring.

 

[moon_child]

Marina is in EVERY. SINGLE. TOWN.