Interesting. I don't have a lot of background on how the art process works (i.e. if they just outsourced the concepts and applied them in-house or outsourced the whole thing), but it looks like Atomhawk (a UK design company) played a major part in the creative aspect of MK9 (http://www.atomhawk.com/mk.html).
Funny enough, I just did a report on that method and discovered, that while it is the most simple to understand and use, it lacks flexibility once actually into the process. Also, when in the testing(Verification) phase, its pretty much already the finalized product. of Gotta be on your A game and lay the project out right if you want to use that method in a satisfactory manner.
For things like that it might be a joint thing you know cause Nether Realm has artist on staff but if they wanted to render something like that i could see them out sorceing but not to the extent of that you know but hey if they do it might be a sister company under warner
Ahh, I see. For some reason, I vaguely remember that Check has a job in game development? so thats why I brought it up.