Having owned nothing BUT Mossberg 500 variants for 35 years of shooting, personally I would say they are certainly not overly prone to breakage. Some of mine were used alot, and used HARD (in the field) for many years, and I never had a problem with any of them. I cleaned 'em but NEVER completely stripped them down. One in particular (my 1st, a 20 gauge field gun, bought used, which I also practiced shooting clays (informal trap) with almost every weekend--at least 100 rounds), was also carryied around, dropped from trees (deer hunting) fell in the mud...Whatever. Never a malfunction if you kept it reasonable clean (well, never a malfunction as I DID keep it reasonably clean).
Anyway, While I've never owned anything but Mossbergs, I've shot Remingtons and Winchesters, and know many people that have for years. And I would say theres essentially no real difference, from a quality/reliability standpoint, with any of them.