In Mortal Kombat, did the programmers put masks over the characters to hide ethnicities? (Possibly NSFW)

Or is it because faces are so hard to draw?

They just think that masks are cool.
Also, most of the characters do not wear masks.

Look at this roster:
https://i.redd.it/h1alpb7qnj251.jpg
You got black people, native american people, white people, asians, middle eastern people, green people, blue people, big teethed people, insect people, all without masks.

I think it was because the guy who was Johnny Cage was also the model for scorpion, sub zero and reptile, the only masked characters in the original game.