I expect there is a decent amount of back and forth. Graphics demos of different tech in an era always tend to look similar for a number of reasons (tackling similar problems, wanting to outshine a competing similar demo, culture of the time etc.)

I know MrDoob was inspired to duplicate the Famo'us periodic table demo in Three.js/CSS and in the other direction, well its goddam MrDoob, you can't work in web graphics and not be inspired by him.