Perfect

Like you say in your tags

1. Daniel hugs Johnny and offers to fix his car for free (and not in a smarmy "look at how much better than you I am now" kind of way, he's being legitimately nice) the first time he sees him - it's Johnny's POV that makes it seem in any way insidious, like Daniel is just living his life

2. the reason it seems like it's surface-level about Johnny or even "about Cobra Kai" is that we don't get any proper mentions about Silver until midway through season 2!!!! and even then he's not mentioning Silver by name (someone with better memory than me, when is the first time Daniel says Silver's name out loud on this show? is it... season 4???)

3. your other excellent point about "it's very hard for him to separate silver from ayone who fights the same as him" - I think this is shown multiple times in various ways, not just through fighting but through like... general character things that happen post-Cobra Kai opening that just affirm all of Daniel's Fears - multiple posts have talked about this before + that reddit post I can't find right now sorry, but examples:

- Kyler dating Sam "I've known a lot of men who seemed nice, but were pieces of crap behind the scenes" (paraphrased) (s1)

- His reaction to Johnny saying Kreese is dead + later reaction to finding out that Kreese isn't dead (s1+s2)

- His reaction to discovering that Robby had lied to him about being Johnny's son (s1)

- His reaction to finding out that Sam is at Johnny's place without him knowing about it (s2)

4. I made another post about Daniel's trauma trigger moments (basically every time something triggers him on the show it leads directly to his making some of his most reactionary decisions and/or emotions), but there are several other things that are direct call-backs to Silver long before he's a glint in Kreese's "I should call up my ex again" eye

5. Season 3 calms down on these callbacks for the most part, because Daniel is off doing hot-girl shit in Okinawa with Chozen, and by the end of that Kreese decides to call up Terry -

the way I read that at the time was that Terry is like. The Big Bad. He is badder than Kreese. He will be so bad that Kreese will be horrified by him (oh hey, I was right) -- Terry is like. Cobra Kai's Biggest Bad Guy, and Johnny doesn't know who the fuck he is - the reason we know he's a bad guy is because we know what he did to Daniel

Of course, if you haven't seen TKK3 you... don't necessarily know that? The Things He Did to Daniel haven't actually been talked about or shown yet, so that's where the clown shoes come in: I think this is a deliberate choice, because he is (to reiterate) The Big Bad, and you don't want to overplay your "all the bad shit this guy did" card if you're trying to get six seasons out of it

6. Small six, but I'd also want to add that - while he was bullied badly in TKK1, he was also beaten up several times and almost killed in TKK2 and he was so ready to let that go without any problem - on its own TKK1 doesn't really carry a narrative on Daniel's side that's incomplete (in the same way that leaving Johnny in a parking lot feels a little incomplete)

Daniel's unfinished business is TKK3, or the movie where he was manipulated and abused and then it ended

and this is all pre-s4 stuff (s4 which feels like a prelude to s5 in my opinion, which is where once more, my clown shoes enter the picture). Once Silver arrives Daniel tanks his relationship with Johnny (with - like your point said - Johnny's help, because he's got a lot of easily pushed buttons), which is probably a big reason why they don't win the tournament. And Silver wins. (the end, lol can you imagine)