My good man, now you're doing me a disservice and ignoring some key information and details that came about in MK4, in particular, a certain comic penned by John Tobias, depicting Johnny Cage as being pretty chill for a guy choosing to become a mortal again and continue the fight.
After a failed attempt to nab Jarek, Sonya gets on a chopper and finds Johnny Cage there. And what is her reaction? Surprise that he's there and asking who authorised it, as opposed to surprise that he is alive after watching him die when the realms separated. He even exclaims that he "didn't sign on for anything like this" when Liu Kang mentions that they have to take the fight to Edenia... How did he not sign up for that if he asked to be resurrected to help them?
Also, while his biography states that he wanted to come back after seeing Liu and the others in the fray, the comic depicts the attack on the Heavens as being days before the fighting bled onto Earthrealm, and at that point, Johnny Cage is already alive, and has no clue as to what's going on. Did he suffer amnesia? Did Raiden do an impression of Superman and spin around the world to undo some of the battles and make Johnny Cage forget that he was dead?
I understand that they aren't exactly spelling it out here that he was never considered dead, but surely you can see that Liu Kang, Jax, and Sonya aren't even batting an eye at a living Johnny Cage right in front of them, along with all the hints that Johnny is as clueless as ever. You want to chock it up to bad writing? Be my guest, especially with the cluster fuck that were the multiple batches of biographies for the Gold characters, the Reiko/Shao Kahn dispute, and a lot of the issues between the MK2 comic and biographies of the game, but the inference that Johnny Cage never died was there as early as MK4.
As for showing Johnny Cage dying at the hands of Motaro in the latest game... Fine, I can't argue with that, they finally did what I'd hoped and acknowledged his death, but then that creates a whole fuck tonne of problems when we have to explain why it was so easy to resurrect Cage, yet so convoluted and complex for Raiden to do the exact same thing for Liu Kang in Deception and Armageddon, but that's the old canon for you.
As for the topic at hand, the bulk of my response was kind of meant for some kidding around, but now that I'm awake and refreshed... The idea of a guy from the Heavens would be kind of cool because we do not have enough reference or characters from the polar opposite of the Netherrealm, but my main gripe is that I can't imagine Netherrealm Studios being able to make a character like that and make him more interesting than any of the other good guys we have. Okay, so he's from the Heavens, maybe he's an ancient, angelic general or something, but what is he going to be if not anything but good? Good to a fault like Shujinko who mixed it with naivety? Good to the point that the only way to make the character more interesting is to make him die or turn evil, like Liu Kang? Or what about being jealous and not having the same power as other beings, like Raiden and Fujin, and suffering an inferiority complex like Kung Lao? In case you don't see what I'm getting at, Netherrealm Studios isn't exactly known for making the best leading heroes.
As for the address of how can the Elder Gods not be worried about an uprising from Shinnok, it's because they're about as clued in on it now as they were when it happened in the original timeline (i.e, they aren't prepared and most likely the same thing that happened last time with the war will happen again). Heck, I'm kind of getting the impression that they may be more worried about Liu Kang wanting to run things his way! I'm actually kind of hoping we see Shujinko come back and be redeemed in this next game, but that's only because I'm of the opinion that with a 60+ roster to work with, maybe we can help fix up some of the worse heroes to fill in bigger roles instead of trying to create new guys who won't be fully fleshed out and only last us a game.

The MK4 comic wasn't written by Tobias like the MK1 and 2 comics were, it was written by a dude named Ted Adams, and it's not canon.
As for why rezzing Johnny was easy but Liu had to be a zombie:
1) Raiden didn't have Liu's soul to put into his body, because his soul wasn't in Heaven. It was wandering Outworld helping Bo' Rai Cho and Ermac out.
2) They never said Raiden is the one who rezzed Johnny. The Elder Gods could have been the ones who brought him back.

The developers could take death (more particularly; Cage's dying) more gravely, if only to make following the plot easier and avoid misconceptions from occuring. Cage has for now, for a change, yet to die – thank Raiden.

I hear you on the "fix the old before introducing the new" in terms of character development but honestly, 1-2 new characters can be refreshing and fun especially since this is a reboot. Now I'm not saying any new characters have to get the Taven and Daegon treatment and become huge integral pieces of the main plot but, a little new blood would be a welcomed addition in my opinion.

The MK4 Comic was sold alongside the PC Version of the game, and the only reason it was only written by Ted Adams was because of the division the MK Team did to get both Mythologies and MK4 done simultaneously; John Tobias was working on MK Mythologies, but he still penned the original MK4 comic, as it clearly states that it's "based on a story by John Tobias." Why is this significant? Because unlike other (namely, unofficial) comics, this one had something written by the story writer of MK at the time. He's not just a "consultant" and the story isn't just "based on the characters created by Ed Boon and John Tobias," Adams had to take Tobias's already written work, and polish it to make it presentable for the comic. To automatically assume that he would have taken several liberties, like brush off Johnny's death and the emotional attachment to it, especially for a comic that would be shipped with the game and explain why it is reintroducing Goro into the actual story doesn't make sense.

So, just to paint the scenario you've presented me... While the Heavens are being invaded by the Netherrealm, led by a Fallen Elder God who's been to the realm before and knows enough about the occupants to be a pretty big threat, and his Demonic armies are slaughtering actual Gods and stuff, the Elder Gods decided to take time off from worrying about it to humour Raiden, get Cage's body out of the ground on Earth, and bring Johnny Cage back to life to help Earth and save their realm. That is the most plausible explanation for it?
The Elder Gods are known for doing jack shit to keep realms from getting assimilated by Shao Kahn, and continue this trend when the two most powerful sorcerers in Outworld purposefully kill Earth's Champion, with their inactivity being so frustrating to Raiden that he give up the rank of Elder God and goes on a personal vendetta against these guys. Somehow, these very same Elder Gods were convinced by Raiden to bring back Earth's cheesiest celebrity because they're in such dire need of assistance against one of their most powerful foes in reality that maybe someone from Hollywood will Die Hard his way into heroism again.
Maybe Raiden and Johnny promised them tickets to Cage's next blockbuster that he'd film once he won the War of the Spirit Realms (the working title of the feature), with the Elder Gods getting cameos and saving the FX guys a budget!
That's just MK, I guess!

I can agree with this. If there's any game to take advantage of for adding in new good and evil characters, it most likely will be this one. More Demons and maybe even introduce Angels to the series? It would be my cup of tea, especially if they do manage to bring back guys like Jarek and Reiko without making them placeholders to represent the characters we wish we could've had instead.

And yet, that's what happened. Perhaps not intentionally...I find it more likely that the writer just didn't get briefed on every character properly and that's why Cage's story doesn't match up, than that Tobias would have deliberately come up with a different story than what he put in Cage's bio. Tobias wrote the bios and could have changed Johnny's when they made any of the revisions or MK Gold if he wanted to, like they changed Reiko's ending, or like they changed several bios like Ermac and Mileena's from UMK3 to Trilogy.

Whichever the case, as far as I'm concerned, the MK4 comic's just plain not as official as the MK1 and 2 ones are because Tobias didn't do it himself.

Besides, if there is a contradiction between the bio in a game and the content of an official comic, the games ALWAYS override the comic.

The same thing happened in the MK2 comic, which WAS written by Tobias himself. It shows Scorpion showing up before the tournament has started and immediately knowing that Sub-Zero is not Bi-Han and vowing to protect him to atone for his sins, but in the game, his bio says he didn't know, he entered the tournament specifically to fight Sub-Zero, and he doesn't find out they're two different guys and make the protection vow until his ending.

The game is A-1 canon, the primary source of all information about the storyline must be the core product, so whatever the bios say is the true story, the comics are a side project, so they come second and if they don't match, it's the comic that's wrong.

Also note that other scenes of the MK4 comic were retconned by Deadly Alliance, since Outworld and Edenia are no longer the same place.



That's not the scenario I'm presenting, that's the one you're imagining.

The one I'm presenting goes like this:

Shinnok's army, after taking over Edenia, invades Heaven. Raiden and Fujin, obviously, are there fighting, but Heaven's occupants aren't just gods, it's home to all the souls of dead good people too, at least some of these souls join the Gods in fighting off this attack. That includes Johnny Cage.

Shinnok's forces either retreat or have scored whatever victory they intended to and withdraw. Either way, it's canon that the war against Heaven isn't ongoing throughout the whole game, it's a backstory event. They returned to Edenia at some point to launch their next campaign, which is against Earthrealm.

This is the point when Raiden and Fujin travel to Earthrealm to rally their allies like Liu Kang, Sonya, Jax, Sub-Zero, etc.

So at this time, Raiden asks the Elder Gods for permission to take Johnny Cage back to Earth with him to assist in the rest of the war against Shinnok, since he was a big contributor in the defense of Heaven. They agree and raise Johnny from the dead.



Yes, against villains. They won't have any firsthand interaction with the realms if they can help it 'cause they're afraid of waking up the One Being.

But plenty of times they'll do things through proxies or for their proxies.
We already have canon proof that the Elder Gods can and will perform resurrections on request if the person making the request does them a service. They did it for Scorpion in Armageddon and Raiden told Scorp they'd do it for him in MK9 too, if he didn't kill Sub-Zero.



More or less, yes.

They WERE in dire need, and you're underestimating Cage's worth as a fighter for the sake of some jokes about his personality and career.

The dude has legit superpowers. Normal people can't throw fireballs y'know.

If there was a Witch Centuar maybe she could've dodged the attack with witchcraft in Motaro's situation. They can even make an Angel Centaur since Heavenrealm is lacking characters.