Except we have no reason to believe they act any different when not around the girls.
There the ones who attack you in the secret ending and we have flashbacks of them always being bullies.
The franchise up until this game, though I get that many people would probably start with this one. There's also the fact that we're seeing this flashback through the eyes of the same person who acted like she didn't know them in the beginning and even said they seem nice until Misako told her that they're crazy because they "thought" they were dating Kunio and Riki, then suddenly they're the worst. I think the flashback was less about them and more about building up Misako.
And yeah, they're the secret fight but you kinda gotta go outta your way to fight them and even then it's commented on how out of place it is and that someone else should've been there
The scene aside from the text is still identical and it ends with the girls punching them away. They need a legit reason in the narrative for that to happen so they're kind of stuck since they have to make Kunio do something assholely enough to justify their anger
Sure, they had to work with what they had but again I don't really think it was to recontextualize a joke they didn't like more than it was to rework it in a way that makes slightly more sense over there
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