El Diablo mentioned that the more well-known and bigger his reputation, the more powerful he became. This is because he has some kind of spirit inside of him, so being worshipped probably made him stronger.
During the final battle, almost nobody was able to give Incubus pause, except for El Diablo. But that makes sense; Enchantress blatantly implies that Diablo's powers are magical in nature — of course magic is better suited for fighting magic. And when he goes Super Mode, well, that just adds further sense; you'd expect one powerful and supernatural entity to be able to wrestle with another one.
The team is tasked with keeping Rick Flag alive, or they're dead. Twice in the movie, Enchantress' Mooks capture and almost kill him. They're literally playing Capture the Flag.
Why are the mooks so bent on capturing Flag above the others? Because some part of June's consciousness is still active within the Enchantress.
As soon as Flag destroys the remote for the explosive collars and tells the squad they're free to go, Boomerang immediately grabs his drinks and books it. During the squad's Team Power Walk to go into the final battle, he joins in, having reconsidered his decision. What do boomerangs do? They come back.
Deadshot never misses. So why does he intentionally miss Harley Quinn when ordered to take the shot by Waller? For one thing, Deadshot doesn't kill women or children.
Also, the way he looks Waller right in the eyes and says he "missed" - something she knows damned well he never does - suggests he knew Waller, herself, had to be lying about granting him freedom if he killed Harley. She offered him an empty promise, he delivered a wiffed shot.
Batman seems uncharacteristically merciful towards Deadshot and Harley Quinn compared to his attitude in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. However, Deadshot was with his daughter at the time and all of Deadshot's targets were just as bad as himself, if not moreso. With Harley, Batman needed her to tell him where the Joker might be. Batman never had anything to gain from letting Superman live until the end of their fight.
Batman got the drop on Deadshot in an alleyway while the latter was with his daughter. Beating a man down in front of his family and possibly traumatizing the poor girl would make Bruce no better than the man who killed his parents, and fittingly gave Floyd the option to surrender so as to shield his child.
Some have commented that it's somewhat odd for an expert marksman like Deadshot to be aiming his pistol Gangsta Style when confronting Batman... until you remember that since he usually favors his wrist-mounted guns, that's the way he's used to firing. In fact, he's probably much more comfortable and more accurate that way, too.
Everybody seems pretty taken with Enchantress's illusions of happy lives except for Diablo. Why the exception? Because he took Harley's advice and owned up to being responsible for his family's deaths. Unlike the others, who still hold out for the chance at happy lives, he knows he will never have that back because of his actions.
El Diablo's Super Mode has an obvious "Aztec" motif — but he's Latin-American; he probably has Aztec ancestry, so it's entirely appropriate. Furthermore, the original comic-book version of El Diablo was possessed by a supposedly "Aztec" deity, so it only fits.
Although El Diablo's form doesn't really resemble any specific deity known from Aztec Mythology, it does call to mind two specific gods: Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec God of the Dead who usually appeared as a giant skeleton wearing a king's headdress, and Xolotl, a God of, among many other things, Fire & Death who also often appeared as a skeleton.
Enchantress' Face–Heel Turn makes a lot of sense when you combine the earlier Bullying a Dragon treatment she received from Waller with her commentary on once being worshipped during her first conversation with Incubus. Think about it; she went from being respected and revered to having Waller openly treat her as a thing, talking right in front of Enchantress about how she considers "the witch" to be nothing more than a tool she can use as she see fit, all whilst abusing Enchantress' living heart to force compliance. It's really no surprise that she decided to violently remind Waller just where humanity stands on the food chain compared to her, especially if one considers the possibility she and Incubus may have been deceived and betrayed by humanity in the past — they wound up as Sealed Evil in a Cansomehow, after all.
Bruce Wayne consulting with Waller after the Squad saved the day wasn't just about gathering files on metahumans and skilled people. He wanted to see how they worked as a team. The Justice League has a lineup that parallels Suicide Squad's; There's a powerful swimmer (Aquaman/Killer Croc), an individual endowed with otherworldly powers (Cyborg/El Diablo) and a person who knows how to trail a target (The Flash/Deadshot & Captain Boomerang). Combine this with a veteran leader (Batman/Rick Flag) and an expert swordswoman (Wonder Woman/Katana) and Bruce has a basic template for how he'll manage the Justice League once it's formed.
One might wonder as to why Katana and Slipknot were not given introductions when the squad is being presented to the military. The reason is that they are literally just replacements for Enchantress. In universe they are last minute additions.
It's a little strange to hear a 6,000-year-old sorceress say "You don't have the balls!", right? Well, Rick has a sailor mouth and June probably heard him talk that way. Also, crude insults like mocking a man's genital deficiencies are probably one of the few things in human culture that haven't changed much in thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years. Saying such a thing in English may be new to her, the sentiment is not.
Harley's favoured gun is a .357 Magnum Chiappa Rhino. This is exactly the gun Harley Quinn would have, for multiple reasons: The Rhino's most distinctive feature is a low-axis barrel that fires from the lower chamber to reduce muzzle flip and better handle the recoil, something that Harley would have found rather useful when she was still learning to shoot. After all, neither her nor the Joker are stupid, just crazy. The Rhino's cylinder is hexagonal for better concealed carry. Again, Joker and Harley are crazy, not stupid, and surprising an opponent with a concealed Hand Cannon would be very useful to them. While the Rhino is available in multiple chamberings, the .357 Magnum originated as a police round. Typical Joker humor. Chiappa, the name of the manufacturer, is Italian for "buttcheek" (it derives from its founder Ezechiele Chiappa). Again, typical Joker humor.
Why are Harley Quinn & Deadshot much more effective than the tier-1 operators during the first encounter with Enchantress's warriors despite Deadshot using a weapon with the same cartridge and Harley wielding a revolver and baseball bat? The monsters appear to be pretty squishy and only go down from shots to the head. No matter how skilled the operators were, they are trained to aim for center mass, while Deadshot is The Ace who can land consistent headshots, and Harley's bat and revolver work well against soft-fleshed monsters whose main plan of attack is to charge in a straight line, which allows Harley to line up her sights easily. This resulted in a hard first lesson for the operators, who fared much better until Mistah J showed up.
Meta brilliance: one of the chief complaints the film has relates to the Mood Whiplash. Which of the Squad has the main focus? Harley. What are insane people known for? The movie mirrors Harley's tendency to go from perfectly calm to violent or amused at the drop of a hat.
El Diablo rejects the Enchantress' offer of joining her as a god. Even putting aside that Diablo is clearly Christian, his power is implied to come from the Aztec gods, which were powerful forces of nature that occasionally took human form and who needed worship in order to sustain the world. Enchantress on the other hand, is simply a powerful entity who demands worship because she believes she deserves it, so of course Diablo rejects the idea that she's a god.
Which rather implies that the Aztec god within Diablo was insulted by Enchantress's and Incubus's pretensions to divinity, so may have manifested as much for that reason as because Diablo's human side wanted it to. Indeed, if that particular god was once involved in multiple New World pantheons and cultures, it might even have known the siblings as rivals for human devotion, many ages ago, so is taking care of Unfinished Business by foiling them.
Capt. Boomerang's theme during the introductory montage is "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by AC/DC, an Australian rock band. It also underscores that Boomerang's a cheap hood.
Why is Deadshot's Heart's Desire shown to be killing Batman instead of quality time with his daughter? Loving father he may be but there is more to him than that. Batman is the reason he is in the situation he is in and the loss of his daughter. Consider this, Deadshot was an untouchable killing machine that the freaking Mob could not touch; just meekly hand over two million to complete a job. Deadshot walked around with impunity in the open without fear. Trying to convince his daughter he was not a multiple murderer. Suddenly Batman takes him down IN FRONT OF HER. To Deadshot Batman is to blame not only for his incarceration, but bringing him low in front of the only thing he really loves. For exposing Deadshot for the criminal he is, not the careful lie he tried to spin. Batman basically destroyed his image in front of his daughter. Logical? No. Prideful? Yes. The reason Deadshot wants to kill Batman so bad in his fantasy is because in his mind Batman cost him everything. The reason his daughter was not in his fantasy because even while hallucinating Deadshot does not want his daughter to see the cold blooded killer he thinks he is deep down.
Deadshot may feel that during that confrontation, Zoe was rejecting him for Batman, because she literally interposed herself to prevent him from firing at the vigilante. It's possible that Zoe not being there is the real element of that Might-Have-Been fantasy of Deadshot's, as if only he'd run into Batman in his daughter's absence, he could have (or thinks he could have) killed the Bat without losing Zoe's trust or admiration.
This is tied to a piece of fridge horror below, but Waller calling up Bruce for protection makes a lot of sense. It seems weird that she's calling him for political protection, since Amanda's basically been throwing generals around for the whole movie, but there comes in the brilliance. She can handle the political fallout without Bruce's help. As flawed as Task Force X is, even if they caused the incident and destroyed millions in damages, there's too much power at stake for the generals to leave her in the lurch. The US government needs supers, and Amanda's the only person who has shown any control over them, it'd be like firing Oppenheimer because a test run destroyed a mountain. It's bad, but it also proves why you need the person in charge. So Waller's good on that end. But she made one mistake in the movie (besides unleashing a demon to destroy the world) that she can't fix on her own. She pissed off the Joker. Joker has no regard for laws and jurisdiction, she can't tie him up with bureaucracy, and she has no political blackmail to control him, if he felt inclined, he'd just kill her on sight. He's already shown to be capable of breaking into Belle Reve, and compromising the people working for her. He's a loose end that could strangle her. So what does she do? She calls the one person who could stop him. She calls up the Bat. Hell, she didn't even need to mention the Joker, all she needed to do was act scared, make a deal for political protection she doesn't need, and give him some good intel. Now she's on his radar, now she's an asset to him. So if she goes missing, or if the Joker starts sniffing around for her, he knows where to start looking, and it gives him good reason to protect her in addition to you know, Bruce being a superhero. With him being the Bat, best case scenario he'll take care of the Joker before she even needs to know he's there, worst case, he slows the Joker down long enough for her to put up some better defenses. Either way, it frees her up to clean up the rest of her mess.
The three characters on the Squad who get the most narrative focus are Harley, Floyd, and Chato. They all act as mirrors or foils to a member of the trinity of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman in some way:
Deadshot and Batman are both grizzled Badass Normal fighters who have been at their jobs for years. Floyd is an assassin for hire whose speciality is guns, whereas Bruce follows a Thou Shall Not Kill code and hates guns. Floyd is motivated by his daughter and his desire to keep her safe, and the Bruce in this universe is implied to be grieving after the death of his protege/adopted son. Bruce is the one to seek out other people for the Justice League, and Floyd, initially unwilling to join the Squad, is the one to rise to a leadership position within the group. They're both more emotionally closed off than most of the others on their teams (Batman is Batman and Floyd is "not a hugger"), and they're also the only ones out their respective trinities who wear masks.
Harley and Wonder Woman are both motivated by love, but while Diana's love for Steve and humanity inspired her to heroics, Harley's love for the Joker turned her into a villain. Diana's arc is about accepting love as a force for good, while Harley struggles with the idea that the Joker is manipulating her. Diana loves children and babies, and part of Harley's dream included having children. Diana is one of the most stable influences in the Justice League, and is very emotionally supportive of her teammates; Harley is chaotic and enjoys stirring up drama, and spends a good portion of the movie willing to betray the Squad. They both watched the man they love die in an explosion, although Harley's turns out to be Not Quite Dead. Also, their comic book counterparts are both attracted to women; Harley has been in a relationship with Poison Ivy, and Diana was recently confirmed as bisexual.
El Diablo and Superman were both born with incredible power, and could probably take over or destroy the world if they were inclined. People have viewed them as gods, but while Clark seems uncomfortable with this, Chato accepted the worship and used it to build his gang empire. They have both lost family as a direct or indirect result of having powers: Clark was forced to watch his father die rather than risk his secret identity, and Chato lost control and killed his wife and children. Both have willingly surrendered to authority, Chato to the cops and Superman to the U.S. government's hearing, and of course, both sacrifice their own life to save the world.
Other Tropers have noted how the Harley/Joker relationship depicted in this film, while still not healthy, is far more reciprocal, passionate, and less abusive than traditional depictions. Some might suggest it's because this Joker is different from other incarnations, at least in regards to his feelings for Harley. I say it goes back to Joker and Harley's killing of Robin. Batman was clearly profoundly affected by this, becoming much more ruthless and willing to kill. The Joker undoubtedly picked up on this, and opted to twist the knife of anguish even further, as he's all about pushing Batsy over the edge. What better way to rub in the face of your greatest enemy his greatest loss than by flaunting your continuing and thriving love affair, especially when said lover is an accomplice to your loved one's murder?
Why was Harley so pissed off when El Diablo revealed his backstory? Because as we see later, what she really wants is a normal life with the Joker, complete with children. El Diablo had what she wanted, and he could have held onto it, but instead, he destroyed the people he loved.
When Joker drives into Gotham Harbor, Harley screams that she can't swim. Later, after Batman dives in after them, he swims past the open driver door, showing that Joker abandoned her. Actually, Mr. J realized that he couldn't escape with her, and he knew Batman would save her, allowing him to remain free to bust her out later.
Harley and the Joker are shown to be a lot more loving than they are in other media. Remember though that this version of the Joker was able to charm Harley even before her chemical immersion. We're being taken for a ride just like Harley was.
Waller casually murdering her entire on-site staff and claiming they didn't have high enough clearance to be a part of this, a poor excuse for removing any witnesses to her being the cause of the Midway City incident. How many times before has she murdered government employees to secure her own career? Plenty, in all likelihood. You could say she knows How to Get Away with Murder. What's really chilling is how Flag seems to brush off her justifications with a nonchalant "Hey, I've buried mistakes before". This is after watching her murder U.S. citizens in cold blood. Really makes us wonder about Deadshot's "You've been to the Dark Side" comment earlier, and reminds us that principled and capable of love as Flag is, he's still a government-sanctioned killer and black operative.
When Enchantress tries to win the squad over by offering them their fondest dreams, she shows Deadshot successfully killing Batman back on the night he was captured. Note that, in comparison to the others, this the most directly violent one and that, in this dream his daughter is nowhere to be seen. The implications of this could be that Deadshot cares about the possibility of being the one to kill Batman to be even more important to him than living with his own daughter. This is further backed up at the end, when the first thing he says he has to do when he thinks he's free is not see his daughter, but "settle some business in Gotham".
Over the course of the first act, we see Harley forced onto a stretcher by several armed thugs, working as a table dancer in a seedy nightclub frequented by criminals and being at the mercy of some lecherous prison guards. That's a lot of opportunities for her to have been sexually assaulted.
The soul of Katana's husband is trapped within her sword. If the soul includes his consciousness, then he's forced to witness every injury she may have sustained over the course of her crimefighting career and he can't help her any more than she can help herself.
If you look at Captain Boomerang and Slipknot's escape attempt, it becomes much more horrifying in context. Captain Boomerang was introduced killing his accomplice in a robbery, right before he was caught by The Flash. Furthermore, when he and Slipknot attempt to make their escape, Boomerang gives up rather quickly. The implication... Captain Boomerang incited the whole thing to test just how serious Waller and Flag were about the bombs and sacrificed Slipknot to test the whole thing.
And why Slipknot specifically, rather than one of the others? Slipknot, like Boomerang himself, is a bank robber. Definitely a set-up, because Digger's eliminating a competitor as well as testing Waller's Explosive Leash threat.
The novelization of the film states that a million and a half men, women and children were killed by the Enchantress' minions in merely the first wave, thus making it perhaps the worst single act of destruction in recorded history and makes Zod and Superman's battle in Metropolis look like a barroom brawl.
Through looking at an easter egg, you can see that Harley Quinn is likely as responsible for killing Robin as Joker is. Kind of harder to see her as a sympathetic and quirky character with that in mind, isn't it?
It makes Harley kissing Bruce when he tries to give her mouth-to-mouth even squickier. Being forcibly kissed by someone is bad enough; imagine being forcibly kissed by the woman who helped torture and murder your son. This does however also become a Moment of Awesome for Batman if he knew exactly what Harley did and yet still tried to save her life, especially for this version of Batman who no longer seems to have a no kill rule.
Amanda Waller arranges for Bruce's protection from those who would seek repercussions for Waller's involvement with the events of the film. That's all well and good... except for one person, who not only fully knows what Waller did to his girlfriend, but also survived her order to have the both of them assassinated. The Joker's probably not the type to just let bygones be bygones on something like that, so Amanda's got quite a target on her head and Bruce couldn't even save his own partner from the Joker's murderous rage. The Joker probably didn't even have a motive to kill Robin, but now he would. Long story short, Amanda should sleep with one eye open from now on. Then again considering Amanda deals with pissed off Gods, world class assassins and global politics on a daily basis. She may consider Joker whose main ability is murder and mayhem low priority.
The fact that Bruce Wayne has a company that manufactures small remote-detonated explosives with special devices to safely inject into people's necks for no reason but to make them slaves. It seems highly unlikely Wayne would not know about the company's existence as it is not hidden in some backlot or trying to obscure the fact it's a Wayne subsidiary.
That's assuming the injectors weren't built by Wayne's company to, say, inject ID tags under the skins of pets or zoo animals, and Waller repurposed them for use with Explosive Leash pellets.
El Diablo, in a fit of rage, incinerated his wife and children. As the act is not explicitly shown, it's not clear as to whether or not he did this in his normal form or in his Aztec fire god form. If the former, it means that Diablo is a guy with HUGE impulse control problems with precisely the WRONG powerset for his disposition, and if it's the latter, it suggests that his Aztec avatar is a highly destructive god with absolutely no regard for collateral damage or the murder of innocents. With either scenario, it's probably for the best that Diablo dies in the final battle, as it would be only a matter of time before he commits another catastrophic atrocity. If anything, trying in a sad bit of Fridge Brilliance, this might have been the reason as to why he goes for the Heroic Sacrifice. Of course, if it's the latter, then who's to say that the fiery death-god which cohabited in his body won't just find some other ruthless mortal to bond with?
Even with the Enchantress gone, June still won't be free to have a normal life. So long as Waller is alive, you can bet she'll use implicit threats against June to guarantee Flag's loyalty, and to ensure that both of them remain silent about what really caused the catastrophe in Midway City.
To free Harley from the nanite bomb in her neck, Joker had some of his minions abduct the wife of one of the prison technical staff and use her as a hostage. Our only glimpse of this apparently-innocent woman is the live feed from a tablet, being terrorized with a knife at her throat. We never find out what happened to her or her husband, but given that it's Joker who holds their lives in his hands, and he's furious about Harley's predicament...
. This is exactly the gun Harley Quinn would have, for multiple reasons: The Rhino's most distinctive feature is a low-axis barrel that fires from the lower chamber to reduce muzzle flip and better handle the recoil, something that Harley would have found rather useful when she was still learning to shoot. After all, neither her nor the Joker are stupid, just crazy. The Rhino's cylinder is hexagonal for better concealed carry. Again, Joker and Harley are crazy, not stupid, and surprising an opponent with a concealed Hand Cannon would be very useful to them. While the Rhino is available in multiple chamberings, the .357 Magnum originated as a police round. Typical Joker humor. Chiappa, the name of the manufacturer, is Italian for "buttcheek" (it derives from its founder Ezechiele Chiappa). Again, typical Joker humor.