Katherine Drib was modeled after Brøderbund product manager Katherine "Cricket" Bird.
When the game was originally created, it was intended as simply a game with questions about geography being a relatively incidental aspect of the game. However, the publisher eventually learned that educators were increasingly using the game in schools to teach geography. With that discovery, the publishers quickly realized that they could tap into a whole new market in education and refocused the game franchise to take advantage of it.