Eventually they settled on doing this crossover game that has pretty much nothing to do with the main MK story and exists in its own kind of pocket universe. This is indeed what people refer to as "MK8". Technically it is a mainline MK and not a spinoff.
Fun Fact: This is the first game in the series not rated M for Mature. They dropped to Teen for this game only, and it suffered a bit in the reviews as a result. The fatalities and moves / blood are all toned way down for ths one. Likely because they figured the DC fanbase coming in for this game would skew younger.
Not so Fun Fact: There are no subtitles in this game and no option for subtitles, so playing on mute at all and having any chance of following the story wasn't happening. Pretty bad accessibility for a game from 2008 too. The previous several games did have subtitles so I don't know how this kind of oversight even happened.
