Elena coming back means more fanart of her. Win-win.

other skilled fighters, in another he is punching mutants, vampires, a walking cactus and tentacle monster from another dimension.

I mean, I do find it interesting some trivia about the characters and even watched the anime but I don't have any expectations of any consistency between the many different games, media and even the horrible American cartoon. In one game Ryu is some martial artist traveling the world fighting

Stories in fighting games can work in multiple ways. Some fighting games are like Guilty Gear or BlazBlue, with complicated epic storylines that the players mostly ignore. Other fighting games are like Marvel vs. Capcom, with a flimsy excuse plot that the players ignore even harder.

Bison has been coming back to life for all of SFV. SF6 Bison looks like a partial success, which makes sense following up SFV. Terry and Mai showing up on the other hand... that opens up a lot of possibilities. SF could even get Teken crossovers in the future.

If you make a good universe, people will care. If the writer's don't care about making one, then yes, people won't care. And that's not a Good thing. Because if you don't care about it, then people won't bother with it in the long run.

When you care about the characters, you care about their stories.

Do people really care about Street Fighter lore? Not saying it is bad, just unimportant in a game about punching all the other characters.

Narratively, bringing back Dictator just doesn't make sense. It's like bringing back Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker. "Somehow, on Tuesday, Vega has returned."