MK4 already had Heaven. Johnny went there when he died.

And the Elder Gods don't live there, they live in "The Void", the emptiness outside of the realms. It seems like the Lesser Gods like Raiden and Fujin do live in Heaven, though.

Oh okay, this always confused me because there isn't a lot of mention of heaven, but it seems like characters enter and exit the netherrealm as they please.

It would have been nice if that was a realm you could enter in deception. I think the developers could expand on it a bit.

I would definitely not be opposed to heaven-realm? being expanded in mkx. Would allow an addition of "angels" to join the ranks of the new cast. Could set up some interesting story lines.

Always saw Edenia as the closest thing to heaven. There is already a actual heaven in MK too. It's part of Earthrealm. NRS can build on what we do have.

Yeah, but they should call it "etherrealm". (Play on ethereal, contrasts with netherrealm.)

Also I just realized that's probAbly why they named it the netherrealm.

Heaven just sounds dumb in terms of mk.

Technically, it's referred to in canon as "The Heavens", plural.
There's also a THIRD afterlife realm, the "Spirit Realm", which is what ghosts like Liu Kang in Deception become part of when they for whatever reason don't go to Heaven or Hell. It sort of overlaps with the living realms like an Astral Plane, which is why ghosts are able to float around realms like Earth, Edenia, Outworld, etc. and pass through stuff, they're sort of half in one realm, half in the other at all times.
Nightwolf gets his powers from the spirits that live in the Spirit Realm.

Yeah they should already introduce Jesus as playable character. He could use the cross as weapon. Seriously if they do introdu heavens they should bring in Tyrael fom Diablo 2!

If I had to pick a Blizzard guest character then I would pick the Protoss.

Truth.

MK as a series pulls from Eastern mythology and symobolism so a realm duality with Netherrealm makes sense and could provide for some pretty interesting characters. And for the record, NO I'm not fan of a stereotypical white-winged Angel/Seraphim character showing up in MK. That idea is played out.

There doesn't seem to be any such creatures in the MK lore anyway.

Except for the makers of Ashrah's sword, and it's heavily implied they're some sort of imposters, a dickish race that's enemies of the vampires and mind controls people into doing the dirty work of slaying them.

This might purely be my Christian perspective, but I think Heaven would be a realm that would be sort of hard to just waltz into.

You'd think the same rules would apply as for the Netherealm, but in reverse. "Only those with good/pure souls can enter/exist here."

Forget angels. I want more god characters. 20+ years in this mythology and all we have are Raiden and Fujin. I want a fire god, an Earth god, a water god etc.

They were in Mythologies. Their character designs were super-bland.

Also, Shao Kahn, Shinnok, and Argus are members of the MK pantheon. Kotal might be too.

That's unfortunate. Does that have to mean they can't give them another shot? Just because they came up with bland designs before doesn't mean they couldn't try to reintroduce them and make them more interesting.

And true...I forget about Kahn, Shinnok and Argus. I really want more elemental-based gods to play as though.

Well wouldn't a water guy just do what Rain does?

And fire/burning/melting is covered by Liu Kang, Scorpion, Sonya's Kiss, Shang Tsung, Kintaro, some versions of Goro, Kano and Hsu Hao's lasers, Sektor, Kai, Tanya, Bo' Rai Cho with a torch, Blaze, Hotaru's lava, probably something Shujinko does, Kobra, Taven and Daegon, one of Smoke's MK9 finishers, Kotal's Sun God variation...gimme a sec, I'm probably forgetting somebody...

The Netherealm isn't just a realm you can just waltz into either. Shujinko's soul had to be corrupted in order for him to enter it. Plus in Ashrah's ending it states that Smoke was having difficulty adjusting to it because as Shujinko said [he was narrating] that there was "still Good in the cyborg" . If Smoke was in control he not have been allowed entrance into Netherealm.

Fair enough. lol. I at least want to see Liu Kang become a fire-based god then.