First Mortal Kombat 12 tease looks like a grain of sand

NetherRealm has released what looks like the first tease for the upcoming Mortal Kombat 12.

At the end of a video, below, in which Mortal Kombat developers thank fans for their support over the past 30 years, is a brief clip showing what looks like grains of sand falling from an hourglass. One of these grains of sand, perhaps the last, explodes.

What does it mean? As you'd expect, Mortal Kombat fans are having their say. The consensus is the tease relates to Kronika's Hourglass. Kronika, the antagonist of Mortal Kombat 11 and the self-styled Keeper of Time and Architect of History, used the Hourglass to alter time and space, which led to the fun interactions between young and old versions of the same character in Mortal Kombat 11.

Spoilers for Mortal Kombat 11! In the Aftermath expansion set after Kronika's defat, Fire God Liu Kang (don't ask) and Raiden use the Hourglass in an attempt to restore history, but that scheming sorcerer Shang Tsung sticks his oar in and ends up disrupting the plan. There are twists and turns, but the upshot is the player gets to decide who controls the Hourglass: Shang Tsung or Lui Kang. Let's go with Lui Kang.

Fast forward to this new tease, and the likelihood that Mortal Kombat 12 follows on from these events in some way. Has Lui Kang's use of the Hourglass backfired in some way? Why did the final grain explode? Is it creating a new universe of some kind? Is it resetting the Mortal Kombat timeline?

Given NetherRealm is now teasing Mortal Kombat 12, I doubt it will be long before we find out the answers. And we know Mortal Kombat 12 is due out in 2023 because an executive at parent company Warner Bros. blurted it out in a financial call.