The common denominator is the instance the particular comment is posted from. For instance you could be viewing any thread in particular. On any instance in general. But if it's one of the ones that's defederated from lemvotes like lemmy.ml. That person's comment or post and everything under it will give you a 404.
It will also cause a mismatch on vote count. You will see everyone that upvoted or downvoted the comment except for those from the defederated instances.