I have miniature "balcony" tomatoes which I've planted from seeds last year, and they gave fruit which have been sitting in the fridge slowly drying down and shriveling for about half a year. A few months back I decided to try and plant these shriveled up tomatoes without taking them apart to get to the seeds inside, just to see what would happen. I think all of them sprouted, but there is a noticeable difference in sizes of the new plants. As you would expect, most fruits have produced groups of small saplings, but some have grown into few, but much more massive.
You can barely see the gaps in soil because I used sprouting pods and planted some of them together into one pot. Why is there such a great difference between the saplings? Is it just because the bigger ones had so few other seeds to compete with for nutrients? Because it doesn't look to me like it would be that big a deal, but I may be wrong. Could it be because the roots got stuck inside the tomato fruit's skin? Or is it because some fruit have had more time to mature better than others?