What if there was a game where....Liu Kang lost the MK tournament, Kung Lao's ancestor beat Goro, the original Sub-Zero was never killed, Reptile never "hid" , Scorpion never became a demon, you know what I mean?
Then the characters will be completely different. Then you have Hanzo instead of Scorpion. You'll have some other four-armed creature as the sub-boss. And Reptile would most likely become a playable character.
That is the direction a comic book writer would go. I tend to stick to the canon and continue it from there. Rather than dealing with the what if scenario for existing games I tend to focus on what ifs for continuing games to add more depth to the events from previous titles.