Karen's development[]
I've been waffling on whether I should add any of this to the wiki, and if so where I should add it - it's pretty speculative for article content.
Karen has a somewhat distinct hairstyle, she's the only blonde girl in the school and she wears a barrette (Melody also wears a barrette).
So, in some super early concept art, there were two female jock characters - 'cheerleader' and 'sporty girl'.
'Sporty girl' is pretty clearly Mandy. 'Cheerleader' doesn't resemble any character in the final build, but she does have presumably blonde hair (it's uncolored sketch art) and a barrette.
The cheerleader sketch never appeared in even older versions of the game. However, an older girl with her blonde hair pinned back by a barrette who looked somewhat similar to the cheerleader appeared not only in some later concept art, but existed long enough to actually have a character model.
So basically, I'm thinking that Unknown Barrette Girl might have actually been a very old version of Karen. As in, they came up with two female jocks, initially cheerleader/blonde barette and sporty girl/dark ponytail. They then switched their personalities to sporty girl/blonde barette and cheerleader/dark ponytail, and finally changed sporty girl/blonde barrette girl into a little kid. As I write this I think it's too uncertain to add to an article, but interesting to talk about. Jeff (talk·stalk) 06:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC)