Chris first appears in Friday the 13th Part III (1982) as a young woman visiting a family homestead with friends to overcome trauma.

Writing duo Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson wrote her as the new protagonist of the series after the previous film's lead, Amy Steel, declined to return as Ginny.

An uncredited Petru Popescu rewrote their script and spent the most time developing Chris—giving her an in-depth background and a past connection to series villain Jason Voorhees.

The character's in-depth background and her characterization of dealing with her trauma have contributed to her being a topic in academic studies for shifting the focus of the villain in horror films to the protagonist.

Additionally, Chris is the lead protagonist in the two novelizations based on the third film, Michael Avallone's 1982 and Simon Hawke's 1988 adaptations, each altering her ending.

[1] In this film, Chris is a young woman recovering from trauma who takes a group of friends and acquaintances to the Higgins Haven, her family homestead.

[4] In the nightmare, Chris enters the barn in an attempt to find the missing corpses to prove her sanity to authorities and is decapitated by Jason in the process.

Writers Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson conceptualized her following Amy Steel's decision to turn down the offer of reprising Ginny, the heroine of the prior film.

[7][9] The television actress had recently led Jim Sotos' feature length slasher film Sweet Sixteen (1983) which caught the attention of Frank Mancuso Jr., the producer of Friday the 13th Part III (1982).

[11] Kimmell states she got permission to alter the lines for this scene as she believed the Friday the 13th series to have a young audience and didn't want the film to be overtly sexual.

[13] Kimmell recollects obtaining bruises throughout the shoot from performing Chris's stunts—such as the barn beam scene where she was 18 feet above the ground and had to fall.

Newhouse highlights her monologue as showing her "in a sense worth saving because her introspection marks her as unique in a world of otherwise generic teenagers.

"[17] Similarly, Brennan Thomas characterizes Chris as showing signs of PTSD, emphasizing her as the franchise's most physically and emotionally vulnerable character.

Clayton attributes her backstory and its connected flashback scene that alludes to the possibility of rape by Jason as allowing Chris to have a fully developed character arc that explains her mental breakdown at the end of the film.

Clayton argues that the sufficient characterization provided to Chris allows the audience to have an emotional engagement with her wellbeing compared to the heroines of the prior installments.

[19] Joan Bunke (Des Moines Tribune) describes Chris as "dim" for the character's decision of returning to the place that traumatized her.