Headscratchers / The Suicide Squad

Island size

• Just how small is this island? The Squads approach from opposing beaches but when an explosion is caused by Team 1, Team 2 can see the fireball.
  • It could have just been the fireball being really huge.

What were those octopus creatures?

• Nanaue is basically bulletproof as evidenced when Bloodsport's weaponry and machine gun bullets bounce off of him; so then how where those weird octopus hybrid things able to injure him?
  • They're really nasty, which is probably why they were being bred in the first place.
  • Sharkskin is tough, in fact untanned shark hides were used as sandpaper. Just like kevlar a sharp object will cut the shark skin whereas an impact force wouldn't tear the skin.
  • They might be alien or Atlantean in origin.

Silent ambush

• How did Sol Soria and Rick Flagg not hear any of the commotions outside of their tent when the Suicide Squad was killing her soldiers?
  • I thought this too, so I watched the scene again. There's a bit of suspension of disbelief happening but also they're not actually being too loud, outside a couple of their kills, which may have been drowned out by the revelry in the tent.
  • Note that even the soldiers are not being aware of what is going on as they kill the guy next to them, Peacemaker even go to the length of using blowdarts and a silencer.
  • Counterpoints: Flamethrower and explosive compression rounds.
  • At one point several soldiers witness the squad and do not sound an alarm. It could be that most of the soldiers were aware that these were the strange allies they'd been warned were coming and did not resist or sound an alarm.

Starro impervious to bullets but not to rats and a javelin?

• Thousands of high-powered bullets fail to penetrate Starro's eye, but ordinary rats and a Harley Quinn with a javelin do?
  • The javelin is a special, possibly magical weapon, and the rats enter the hole made when Harley pierced the eye.
    • It's not special or magical. It's just that bullets don't travel very far in fluid, and that eye has a LOT of fluid before you get to the meat of Starro in the back. It looked like Harley swam a good 20+ feet when she jumped in before she hit the back of the eye. The soldiers shooting were only using regular rifles, NOT 'high-powered' rifles, most normal rifle bullets travel only a handful of feet in water before stopping, and even high-caliber rounds don't travel very far at the distance they were shooting at Starro, while Bloodsport's explosive rounds blew on the surface of the eye instead of penetrating to the back. The bullets may have irritated his eye but that's about it.
    • How are you coming to the conclusion that the javelin isn't special? And what evidence is there that the bullets are piercing the eye's membrane at all?
    • We were never explicitly shown or told the javelin was special. So there's no reason to assume.
    • Considering it's the only weapon of an established villain, covered in runes and pierced the eye of a creature that was shot with high powered rifles to no effect, there is no reason to assume it's not.
    • It's possible that the bullets also passed through the eye membrane, but simply did insignificant damage to huge organs. The rats could create more damage with more accuracy. They also may have swum past the eye and attacked the brain, which may have been otherwise shielded from bullets.

What were those animals in the aquarium?

• What were those creatures in the aquarium supposed to be? Were they some kind of octopus hybrid or something?
  • My guess is genetically engineered piranha/jellyfish hybrids.
  • As he said, The Thinker has been there for 30 years. They were presumably a side project he messed around with in between researching/torturing Starro and waiting for more 'undesirables' to get dropped off by the dictator.
  • It's possible they were other Starro spawn, meant to protect it against creatures that were otherwise immune to it's mind control. Note that the controller fish bounce right off King Shark, and the aquarium creatures engage in hive mind behavior similar to Starro's zombies.
  • James Gunn in an interview with Entertainment Tonight identified them as the Clyrax that was an alien form that had been picked up and brought to Jotunheim. Interview is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0mjJD_UB6I&t=623s

How do medics handle a kryptonite case?

• So Bloodsport put Superman in the ICU with a kryptonite bullet. I don't doubt he could injure Superman, but what's a human ICU going to do about it?
  • We saw in Dawn of Justice that kryptonite can be fashioned into a scalpel that will cut Kryptonian skin. Maybe the ICU was able to use one to dig the bullet out. (plus, a few years prior Superman Returns showed an ICU team removing a regular bullet from a weakened but still impenetrable Superman using just the hole it caused)
  • It's also possible that, given greater acceptance of metahumans (specifically for Superman after the prejudice he faced, but also more generally) and cooperation with human agencies and the Justice League after the events of that film, human doctors work inside the Kryptonian ship to provide medical treatment to them, working alongside it's supercomputers and other advanced technology.
  • Lots and lots of surgical glue, probably, as kryptonite probably isn't suitable for crafting a needle from.
  • In the original comics when Bloodsport shot Superman and he was hospitalized. The radiation from the Kryptonite bullet weakened the surrounding tissue enough for the surgeon to operate on him (people need to remember that the actual physical Kryptonite is not what's hurting Superman). The surgeon actually had to keep the bullet on the wound area so the Doctor can properly stitch it up since Superman's invulnerability immediately returned after it was taken out.

Where in the world is Cassandra Cain?

• If Harley's back in the squad, where's Cassandra?!
  • Maybe her dad got to her and put her in training...
  • Maybe Birds of Prey (2020) was Through the Eyes of Madness even more than suspected, and Cassandra was less of a willing companion to Harley than the film portrayed her to be.
  • Maybe the Birds took her back.
  • Maybe this is actually set before Birds of Prey.
    • Not likely, unless the GCPD forgot to update their display of Wanted posters: Captain Boomerang was still named as a wanted (and living) fugitive in Birds. And Harley, seeing his poster there, doesn't react as if he's dead.
  • Maybe Birds of Prey just isn’t canon to this.
    • One of the things added to Harley's rap sheet that wasn't in the first movie is vigilantism. Which definitely ties back to Birds of Prey with her fighting Black Mask and his gang.
    • Harley might have just been put back in Belle Reve. Why? Well... she's Harley.
    • ...Why wouldn't it be? They're both part of the DCEU.
    • The DCEU has a very loose canon, especially with the release of the Snyder Cut.
    • Unless clearly indicated or arguable (many fans now prefer the Snyder Cut as their personal Head Canon) all movies happened and are canonical. This movie and Birds of Prey can tie together, she just went back to prison after the former.
    • Furthermore, a recent in-universe Flash comic, in canon with DCEU and serving as a prequel to his movie, has all but established the Snyder Cut as canon and decanonised the "Josstice League" 2017 theatrical version. Because it has Batman praise Flash for saving the world. In Whedon's version, he didn't do this, he saved a Russian family. In Snyder's version, indisputably he saved the world (and the rest of his team to boot). So now we don't even need to call it Head Canon; it's established. Backed up by a change in management at DC and Warner Brothers.
  • Harley decided to drop Cass off with Bruce while she's on the run, since he's already pretty good with kids.
  • Sorry... Bruce the billionaire playboy, or Bruce the hyena?
    • A combination of this and an above one: maybe she just dropped Cass off with one of the Birds of Prey.
  • Maybe she was put in foster care after Harley was arrested.
    • Or she simply ran off and is fending for herself perfectly well.
  • Harley mentions a bad ex who shot her dogs. We're led to assume that this is Mr. J. Harley didn't have any dogs...
    • Harley has Bruce the Hyena. And going by other universe's canon, Harley has TWO hyenas. So maybe between the two movies she got another hyena and the Joker shot them both.

Harley seen as Anti-American

• Why did President Luna see a marriage with Harley as a symbol of anti-Americanism? She hasn't really said or done anything that can be construed as pro or anti-American.
  • Probably just because as a murderous criminal, she's an enemy of the state.
  • Another possibility is that Luna was making up a justification for himself - he just wanted Harley but had to make it sound like it was for the good of Corto Maltese when he'd present her to the population. And even if the people wouldn't have bought it, it's not like he was planning to be a better ruler than the Herreras anyway.
  • It's possible it was a half-truth - that he thought he could spin Harley into an anti-American symbol and his own Eva Perón. Or maybe it was nonsense. We never see evidence of Harley being any sort of symbol beyond his word.
  • It could be BS from a guy trying to seduce a gorgeous woman. Alternatively, by marrying her, he would have the most talented and dangerous bodyguard on the island.
  • It may have been a coup attempt by his military. He was advised to marry her. She is known as an unstable murderer. The general inherits power after his death, stating that he was a romantic.

Rick Flag picked to lead a squad to its death

• Why did Waller, from a Watsonian perspective, appoint Flag as leader of the Team A, as it seems they were a distraction and set to fail?
  • As mentioned before by other tropers, she may have been deliberately trying to get him killed, knowing that he would heavily object to the true nature and origin of Project Starfish.
  • It also might not be a coincidence the only Squad members from the first movie, who witnessed Waller screwing up big time, were all on the sacrifice team. Which isn't promising news for Deadshot, Killer Croc or Katana.
  • It seems unlikely that she was specifically trying to get Flag killed, considering she was the one who informed Team B of his location for rescue. It's possible she trusted his skill to keep him alive even on a mission that was designed to fail (and this is exactly what happens). Especially because a distraction mission is about delaying enemy forces — someone of Flag's combat experience was necessary to hold together a situation designed for chaos long enough for the distraction to work.
    • She was definitely trying to get him killed, for the simple reason that she didn't appear to have TOLD him that his team was a distraction. Flag is a committed soldier, and false attacks/distraction operations are pretty standard military operations. She also definitely seemed like she was aware of Blackguard's sellout and the ambush waiting for them (which actually makes the distraction more effective), but the fact that she didn't appear to have TOLD Flag any of this, or even that there was a 2nd team at all, and then didn't even bother to check if Flag was alive until a member of her staff told her, heavily leans towards the fact that she was trying to get rid of him and assumed he had died in the ambush with the rest of them.
    • If she was trying to get him killed for the purpose of him not finding out about the Starro project, then it's counterintuitive to tell Team B about his location to pick him up for that branch of the mission. We're also coming at this from the assumption that she would know Flag would take issue with and sabotage that objective, which is by no means likely given his history of service (which is something he brings up when they find out about it). This Waller is definitely more reckless with people in her employ than the Ostrander/Yale Wall, but there's nothing to indicate she was trying to kill Flag.
    • It's likely the "rescue mission" (with extreme prejudice) was just to keep any intel from falling into non-government hands. He would have likely remained alive much longer if he hadn't been "rescued".
  • Waller didn't expect Blackguard to betray the group. The "decoy" mission therefore wasn't supposed to just get slaughtered immediately like they do. They were supposed to be ambushing the enemy and tying up the enemy's forces while the infiltration mission was underway. Since the decoy group was planned to be under the heaviest fire, it makes sense that Waller would stock it with the more expendable troops led by the best commander to maintain morale. The troops would get whittled down gradually but keep fighting to continue providing a distraction. This is why she's so upset when Savant flees, giving him many chances to turn back. If the squad getting wiped out had been part of her plan, she would have executed him immediately without concern. This is also why she wants Flagg to get rescued. She always wanted to get him back if possible. But his command skills and moral inflexibility made him a natural choice to lead the decoy mission rather than the infiltration mission.
  • One of the simplest explanations is that it's not like she had anyone else. She needed to twist Bloodsport's arm just to have a second leader capable of infiltrating the complex; diversion or not you still need someone to lead in the time the distraction does its job.
  • Flagg dead was her ideal outcome. Flagg alive and ready to be sent on another suicide mission would just be status quo. Flagg alive and in the hands of better people is her worst case scenario.
  • There's also the fact that he was the leader of the Squad, and putting him at the head of Squad A would make them more convincing as decoys.

Sebastian is smarter than the average rat?

• How is Sebastian sapient?
  • Not sure why you think he's fully sapient? He's functionally just Ratcatcher's trained pet. Nothing he does is honestly anything a trained cat/dog couldn't do. He waves at people (easily trainable, a cat near my gym was trained to do the exact same thing to greet people), brings them things as gifts (cats in particular demonstrate this exact behavior), acts happy when his mistress says things in a certain tone of voice, and leads his mistress to an escape route from danger (plenty of stories of dogs in particular doing this exact thing with cave collapses/avalanches). Sebastian certainly MAY be smarter than an average rat, but in the movie really doesn't demonstrate anything in particular that makes you think he has actual intelligence or ability to plan.
  • Or alternately, the wand may be able to do other things than direct rat control.
  • I think we're just supposed to assume that Ratcatcher 1's nebulously established experiments with rats achieved not only the rat-controlling wand but a highly intelligent rat.

Reckless Blackmail

• Is it wise to blackmail the person who inserted a bomb in your head? You would think Waller would have blown Bloodsport's head off and send her people to retrieve the item (evidence).
  • One of Waller's subordinates just knocked her unconscious for trying to kill off the surviving members Task Force X due to their choice of saving the world from Starro. She probably did not want to go through that again.
  • Bloodsport also stated that he had ALREADY uploaded a copy of the drive to a secure server before contacting her so even if she DID blow his head up the data would still be released. Letting him go was the only way it wasn't going to go public.

Mongal stats

• How is Mongal, an alien on the Superman/Darkseid power tier, just incarcerated in a normal Earth prison?
  • Considering that we didn't really see her powers used that much and that she was ultimately killed by plain old fire, maybe she's an Adaptational Wimp. Or, maybe Polka-Dot Man's power dampener works on her too.
  • First, this isn't a 'normal prison', there's a LOT of metahumans here of various strength, this is clearly the designated prison to incarcerate metahuman criminals. Second, this incarnation is nowhere near Superman/Darkseid level. She can't free herself from a helicopter wreck so her strength isn't particularly high, and she gets killed by basic flame from a fire. Forget competing with Superman, in this movie she doesn't even seem to be on the same tier as King Shark in the strength/durability department, and they didn't have any problem holding HIM in the same prison.
    • I think the better question is how can Mongal take down the helicopter just by jumping on the landing gear? There’s nothing to indicate she’s super-heavy and none of Comic!Mongal’s powers would make it possible.
    • From the looks of things, it was mostly her momentum. Mongal didn't just grab onto the landing gear of the helicopter was taking off; she leapt up onto it as it was flying around. The sudden addition of one or two hundred pounds in one spot unbalanced the chopper and the pilot didn't have the experience necessary to get back under control without hitting something.
    • Possibly Mongal's weight only briefly threw the helicopter off-balance, but the resulting impact of the rotor's blades with some of the Corto Maltese troops damaged the main rotor enough that it entirely lost stability.

Bloodsport vs Starro

• If Bloodsport can nearly kill Superman, how is he having any trouble against Starro or the local Mook?
  • Because as Waller said, he used a Kryptonite bullet. Without that bullet he's no threat to Superman. Nobody in this movie has a weakness like that to exploit.
• Speaking of which, is Superman dead or out of commission for the duration of the DCEU because of the bullet?
  • Waller says he put Superman in the ICU with a kryptonite bullet. If Bloosport had killed him, she'd have said he put him in the morgue. James Gunn for his part has stated that yes, Superman survived the kryptonite bullet.
    • And he showed up (as a silouhette) in Peacemaker

The city is Starro's

• While I understand the desire for revenge and to have a place of it's own to be left alone inside, did Starro really just want the city? Is it just because "Colto Maltese is mine" didn't sound as catchy?
  • From the way he said it, the "This city is mine!" part felt less like a boast of conquest and more like a vengeful "This city is mine... to DESTROY!".
  • Starro may not have been capable of conquering more than just a city. Waller seemed unconcerned that it was running rampant, hinting that the US was aware of these limits.
  • Starro doesn't want land, it wants people. The city is where the vast majority of the region's people are, so that's what it's claiming.

Peacemaker vs Flag

• During Peacemaker and Rick Flag's fight over the Project Starfish hard drive, why wouldn't Flag have gone for Peacemaker's gun which was lying on the ground? Opting instead to attempt to strangle Peacemaker with a lead pipe, which gave Peacemaker the opportunity to fatally stab Flag with a shard of porcelain from the shattered toilet.
  • Because both men are professionals and going for the gun would give Peacemaker a huge opening to exploit for a killing blow in the time it take to dive for it. Also, it is Peacemaker's gun, a weapon Flag most likely has no experience with (in terms of it's weight and how the aim is adjusted) so it would be a risky move to go for it.
  • Watch the fight again. Flag does go for the gun (his being apparently buried in the rubble), but Peacemaker knocks it away. By the time Flag is strangling Peacemaker, they've moved to a different part of the lab, and both are injured. Flag had just gained an advantage over Peacemaker and took the opportunity he had to try and kill him then and there. Peacemaker was otherwise very quick to disarm Flag throughout the fight.

Diving into Starro's eye

• Did Ratcatcher 2 send tons of rats to their deaths? Should I be worrying that they are going to drown inside the eye or blood vessels while doing little to no damage individually (I was a bit worried about Harley too, but of course she knows what she's doing better than the rats. But it may have been a substance that's hard to swim back out of)?
  • Considering a) Harley is making no effort to hold her breath and b) the rats are able to chew the vessels whilst immersed inside the liquid (and do not drown when ingesting it) and yet c) Harley and Sebastian make a gasp for air when they come up out of the iris, the logical conclusion seems to be that Starro's alien biology includes some oxygen-rich liquid which can be consumed for a minute or two while humans and other animals are immersed inside it, providing valuable air, but prolonged exposure under it might still cause drowning. Or else, when they were gasping for air, they had just come out of another liquid which isn't oxygen-rich and is more like ordinary water, and the oxygen-rich liquid doesn't ever lead to drowning.
  • Harley's movements and the speed at which the rats were gnawing at Starro's optic nerves and blood vessels suggest the shots inside Starro's eye were in slow motion. If you ever see rats swim or chew, they do it via very fast back-and-forth movements. If this is the case, then it means Harley and the rats weren't in there for more than 20 seconds or so: Harley punctured the surface of the eye, the rats dove straight in, chewed whatever thin structures they could in an extremely coordinated way, Harley watched it happen, and they all got back out as Starro collapsed to the ground dying.
  • If those were ordinary urban rats, they probably have plenty of practice at swimming through sewage and rain runoff underground. Like many rodents, rats also have folds of skin that close up behind their front teeth to prevent them from ingesting debris as they gnaw on hard materials, so could safely open their mouths to chew through Starro's nerves and vessels without swallowing or breathing in ocular fluid.

Starro wanting to go back into space

• If all that Starro wanted was to go out back into space because it was happier there than trapped with Earthlings, why didn't it control the astronauts to free it from the space station and then out the airlock?
  • Perhaps in his infancy Starro didn't realise how much he cherished the freedom of space, and it took spending decades in captivity to get to that point.
  • Seeing as it was much smaller when it was originally captured and feeds on the minds of its hosts, it's possible it wasn't really intelligent enough to understand what was going on or how to do that, only reaching human-level intelligence after feeding on the minds of many more people.
  • It probably didn't gain the ability to produce its small mind-dominating copies until it matured. They're essentially offspring, albeit stunted and specialized ones, and infant organisms wouldn't have the capacity to reproduce.

Amanda Waller letting Starro rampage

• A number of characters play up Starro's use as a WMD and that any country that can control Starro is able to threaten the rest of the world. If so, then when Starro broke free and started capturing the soldiers and then nearby civilians for it's Hive Mind, why was Waller so insistent on Bloodsport and the others leaving it alone? I know Waller's actions are done in the name of protecting the United States, and this thing looks like a threat to the whole world, United States included, not to mention that the longer it stays loose, the stronger it gets. Shouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone on Earth, Waller included, to stop Starro as soon as possible?
  • She probably intended to send the Navy and Air Force (and also the Justice League would likely have a better survivability rate than the Suicide Squad for this task) after it if it should ever leave the confines of the island, but didn't care enough for the people of the island to exterminate it immediately. An answer to the question about four folders up from here posits that she doesn't think much of his world-threatening capacity.

Is Harley actually slightly metahuman?

• When Bloodsport commands Harley to take the high ground in preparation for the attack on Starro, we can see her take a leap off the nearby rubble up onto a building's ledge to climb up it. Said leap is very high and doesn't look achievable for an ordinary human. I could buy that a peak human training for every level of perfection such as Batman (and believe the universe's wiki backs this up) could pull this off, but it seems like the only justification for Harley to be able to do this (and that's if you're reaching) is she is actually mildly metahuman. I guess it might also justify her diving leap into Starro's iris, that was some distance between the building she pounced off of and his flailing body (which was also leaning back against the nearby building).
  • Maybe. While the normal assumption is that Harley is a Badass Normal, she had a relationship with the Joker, who might've enhanced her to at least make her durable (she managed to survive diving into the same vat of acid that corrupted him). It's unclear if the DCEU version is knowledgeable as the comics version who developed the Joker Venom, but sounds like something he could do.
  • Also, in some continuities, Poison Ivy gives Harley a concoction that gives her an immunity to toxins (which helps Harley, you know, be around Poison Ivy), which also boosts her agility, strength, durability, reflexes and such. Entirely possible she has that here, even though Poison Ivy has yet to make an appearance in the DCEU.

How did Weasel end up in the drink?

• The guy can't swim, and if you look carefully as Flag is instructing the team to prepare for the drop, he's actually panicking at the thought. So Weasel knows he can't swim and presumably doesn't want any part of that. So did Flag push him in? But you'd think Flag is just empathetic enough (not to mention a professional soldier attuned to potential weaknesses in his team) to not want to throw someone (or something) clearly displaying massive aversion to water, straight into it. Did he only actually figure it out just after, when he called out Mission Control for not vetting Weasel for swimming ability?
  • Yes. It just didn't pass Flag's mind that it was drowning that Weasel was afraid of, rather than a first-timer's cold feet about dropping from an aircraft.
  • It's a comic book rule that all supers should have a weakness. Weasel can't talk, which in this case proved to be a near-fatal one, because he was unable to tell the others that he couldn't swim.

Why not polka dots instead of a javelin?

• To defeat Starro, wouldn't it have been a better tactic to have Polka Dot Man throw his dots into Starro's big eye to blind him so they could neutralize his slaves and allow Ratcatcher 2's rats to kill him quickly? By this point, it had been shown to the team that Polka Dot Man's dots disintegrated body parts and the bullets were not hurting Starro's eye...
  • Things were happening very dynamically in the climax. This strategy might not have occurred immediately to Bloodsport, and even if it had, Polka Dot Man is established as seeing everyone (and every living thing, seemingly) as his mother. So he wouldn't be able to see Starro's central eye, and Bloodsport would have to direct him to shoot "mother" in the chest, when Polka Dot Man's immediate motivation displayed was to shoot "her" foot out (perhaps he was very intimidated by when she would walk up to him as a child and bully him?). Unfortunately Bloodsport didn't think to use his team mate's powers as a fine instrument, but rather as a blunt tool.
  • We never see Polka Dot Man throw his dot-streams any farther than a few dozen meters. It's possible that the eye was simply too high up for him to strike, but the leg was close enough.

How did Bloodsport upload the contents of the hard drive?

• Since that happens right after Starro's defeat, it's obvious he used only his uniform to do it, but the uniform is never shown to have a slot for a hard drive and Internet connection capability. It wouldn't even fit his character motif anyway. This was pure script magic and a very lame way of giving the "heroes" a truly happy ending.
  • He has a nanotech armoury able to assemble complex weaponry and melee gear as well as a helmet and grappling gear. If it can assemble everything from a flame thrower to gyro stabilised BFG, stands to reason that he can use it to generate a modem to send the data into the cloud. As an assassin on the go, and as part of his former job being able to receive and transmit information and data would have been a must. Having such a device in his inventory is not script magic but simple deduction.
  • We don't see everything Bloodsport did between Starro going down and his conversation with Waller. No reason he couldn't have simply gone to an undamaged part of the city and found a working computer to upload it through.

When did Harley learn how to swim?

• Just before the Joker and she drove off the pier in the first Suicide Squad, Harley screamed to Mr. J that she couldn't swim. She spent most of the subsequent period either locked up in prison or trying to build her reputation as a criminal, neither of which is conducive to signing up for regular swimming classes. And yet now, in this movie, she doesn't have any of the trouble that Weasel fell prey to during the opening landfall. What, did she talk Joker into busting Croc out of Belle Reve too, and he gave her a few lessons to pay her back?
  • Either the Joker did indeed set her up with private swimming lessons, she did it herself (it would not be that hard to find someone in Gotham's underworld both friendly enough to her (or terrified of her and accordingly willing to comply in the interest of self preservation) and also possibly looking for an easy payday) or perhaps Flagg helped out there whilst she was incarcerated. Being as Harley, unlike Weasel, is blessed with the regular-human ability of cogent communication, she may have insisted as a condition of her participation on getting swimming instruction, so as to (mildly) boost her chances of survival.

Why not just send more drones?

• In the final battle, why didn't Starro just keep sending more of his drones to incapacitate the Suicide Squad? It was shown earlier that it completely stopped people like Cleo, Harley and PDM, who had to cover their faces, and even Bloodsport had to redirect all his gunfire on the drones instead of Starro. Why not just keep doing that?
  • Starro was probably in a lot of pain and not thinking clearly. Alternatively, it could be that Starro just ran out of drones.
  • We see that the drones directly respond to Starro's pain. Perhaps Starro can likewise feel pain when one of its drones is killed, so opted not to keep throwing them at Bloodsport once he'd proven so good at shooting them out of the air.

Why did it not occur to Ratcatcher 1 to sell his device?

• Since we learn that the original Ratcatcher was homeless. Why didn´t he sell his ratcatching device or the rights thereof? Surely someone would pay a nice sum of money for it.
  • Because it's a weapon. One presumes that he had too much integrity to let it fall into the wrong hands. Imagine what the Amanda Wallers of the world could do with it.
  • He also liked rats and believed they deserved to have a worthwhile purpose. The most likely commercial use for his invention would be for the mass extermination of billions of them, Pied Piper style.