I like the Warrior Shrine not being on the island better, personally. I've NEVER thought the Warrior Shrine's existance made sense before now.
I mean, why would Shang have statues made of that tournament's competitors, before they've even done anything important? Now you can say the Order of Light made it to honor the warriors of Earth after the tournament.

i thought it said in the comics that subzero got the scar when smoke got captured.

I always liked the Warrior Shrine being on Tsung's island. It made it really creepy. The earth warriors arrive at his island, and there are statues made of THEM. Before they even got there. Like Shang KNEW exactly who was going to be there and who wasn't. Shrug, maybe there are 2 warrior shrines now or something ;)
Anyway, it never said about Sub-Zero's scar in any comic. I'll go over this again, the origin of Sub-Zero's scar was NEVER revealed before. Not in any comic, cartoon, movie, game bio, or anything. MKSM is the only place that reveals how it came to be.

The statues in the Warrior Shrine don't mean anything. They're there just to be there....ya know..... added decorations that the creators made for the hell of it.

MKM is obvioulsy canon. It's the entire basis for MK4 and has been mentioned in MKDA and MKD since then.

...they wouldn't make a game if it wasn't cannon, alright? Special Forecs turned into a joke and will never be mentioned again, but even it's cannon, at least, until Midway re-writes the whole freakin Mortal Kombat storyline, as they ARE going to do, based on what we've seen, recently.

Look, it's this simple.
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks was not written by John Vogel. It was written by a man named James Krueger. Vogel is credited as "Storyline Support", but obviously, his support wasn't as thorough as we continuity buffs would like.
Mortal Kombat 7 WILL be written by John Vogel. The smart money's on MK7 being a direct continuation from Deception. And since Deception and Deadly Alliance back up the existance of MK4 and MK Mythologies, that means the retconning in Shaolin Monks isn't canon.
None of this is saying that Shaolin Monks is a bad game or that we should forget it ever happened. It just happens to be Midway's version of a Marvel "What If?" comic.

onaga didnt originally have the amulet. shinnok did. shinnok made it for himself. onaga was the original ruler of outworld and has nothing to do with shinnoks amulet.
how could have onaga had it, when quan chi and shinnok had it?? the mkm story says "the amulet could only be made once" so there couldnt be more than one, or could there??
i game is pretty well done. my only gripe is some of the story line. and when you play as the secret characters in the story mode, the cinimatics get all fucked up. raiden calls sub-zero "kung lao" and theres a ctually a scene where sub is swinging a hat..wtf.
if they were gonna add those characters as playable characters they should have a story revovle around them or take out the cutscenes all together.
another thing that kinda bugged me was the whole sub-zero scar thing. the argument can go both was here. cause in mk3 it said he was "marked for death"..where else do you see any "marks" on his body?? it makes no sense at all for kung lao to be responsible for it. it has nver mentioned kung lao doing it in any game, other than this one...it it has the story all screwed up. people agre gonna believe what they want i guess...
but on the other hand, in mk1 it said that scorpion was "marked for death years ago by the lin kuei"..and he has no scar..nore did he when he was mortal.
and another thing..scorpion was NEVER subs body guard. that ending never happened. his umk3 ending never happened. after mk1 the one story line for scorpion that actually took place was mk4.

"Marked" doesn't always mean physically. In this case, it's a synonym for "targetted".
And yeah, it's true that Scorpion becoming Sub-Zero's protector was never officially canon. The fact is, though, before now, having it be so never contradicted anything and added a hell of a lot to Scorpion's backstory.

Scorpion becoming Subby's bodyguard, to me, should have been shown.
I know the first time it was mentioned was in Scorp's MKII ending, but in his UMK3 ending, it confirms that it happened. So they should have shown that. Scorpion also agreed to Subby's protector in the MKII comic by John Tobias (retconned by MKSM, but still now there's 3 different official places it was mentioned to have happened).
I guess Scorpion COULD still become Subby's protector after the scenes that we witnessed in MKSM. As stated above, we know from Scorp's UMK3 ending that the whole "protector" thing DID happen, so I guess it was just after the parts we already saw.
After playing the Mileena battle in the Forest, I believe that the Kitana murdering Mileena thing is probably going to be in the game as well, or if not, it's at least implied that it will happen.
My only other major concern at this point is: MKII. I did the Smoke missions and unlocked the game, and unfortunately, it's got all the same flaws as the MAT2 version (ironically, including the fact that you can NOT get to Smoke in it).
You know... I wish I had been hired as a consultant for MKSM.

My cat would have been a better consultant for MKSM than whoever they had.
Everyone is always saying MK3 isn't a Mortal Kombat Tournament and is just "a war". One thing I liked was that they showed what I've been trying to explain for years. After Tsung & Kahn refused to accept defeat in MK1 and tried to break the rules the tournament became more than just the Shaolin Tournament for martial arts. Look at how Raiden called SM the tournament and when you won you got a "tournament victory". It's exactly how I imagine MK3. The format changed and it's not as organized, but it's still Mortal Kombat.