I saw a similar pic earlier and from what I understand (and believe me, I'm avoiding a lot of it too, so I could be wrong here)... he goes through upgrades throughout the story. I believe it's still the same model, just with a few bits recolored white & gold to match the Kronika aesthetic so many other characters are rocking in this game.

I wanna say the DLC is Shang, Sheeva, Sektor, Cyrax, Mileena, Shinnok. with Rain being unlockable after fully completing the krypt but who knows. If they added 3d era or mk4 characters (havik, fujin) a shokan (sheeva) some cyborgs (sektor cyrax) we would have a near perfect balanced roster. With KP2 having 1 guest character only and 5 more MK characters.... but highly doubtful...

Personally I love fightable NPCs I think they are great addition and add an extra surprise element to story mode rather than just random fights with the same characters over and over.

That being said as a Noob fan I would be massively upset if he was a fightable NPC but not in the game or DLC.

On the topic of DLC I doubt that Sektor and Cyrus will be DLC given how they were part of triborg last game I think it a bit rough for them to take up two DLC spots this time round when we just had them as DLC. And don’t anyway say that we didn’t have Sektor and Cyrax last game we had triborg because I don’t want to hear that bullshit!

We didn't have Cyrax or Sektor. We got Triborg.
In MK Deception we didn't got Noob saibot or Smoke. We got Noob-smoke
No character should be merged, they should be their own unique character.
Tri-borg was shit, gameplay and story wise

True, in some, it is nice to be surprised that way. But on the other hand, it's also hard to see when you can't select them, while they are just in front of you :).
It's a double edged sword kind of thing.

Kronika's doing probably.

Blame MKD.

Nothing wrong with npc's. As long as there playable in the future.

So, nothing wrong with NPCs unless they're eventually DLCs, or by future do you mean some MK game anywhere in the future? Or maybe Injustice 3? Because who cares about who's in MK12 or 13 right now? I care about MK11.