Mario Kart 8

[MrYoshbert]

2. Miyamoto likes to whitewash as many Mario games as he can. Remember Paper Mario: Sticker Star?

Now that's a bit of a stretch, especially since Miyamoto has little to no involvement with the Mario Kart series at all. Hell, the dude's getting less and less involved with the very recent games; he's giving the younger devs more control.

I would have been happy if we even got Plessie along with Sprixie Princess.

Also, this. It seems to me that they just wanted two more heavy and lightweight female characters, and those two would've fit the bill (Plessie is a girl, right?). Hell, if they just needed two more characters period, they could've used the two characters who were cut from past Mario Karts in development: Kamek and Professor E. Gadd (who were supposed to be in MK64 and MKDS respectively).