YMMV / Suicide Squad

• Alternative Character Interpretation: A lot of Deadshot's more selfless moments are open to this. Does he actually care about the people he helps or does he only help them in order to benefit himself?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The subplot about the two Doctors Light and the demon torturing them.
• Die for Our Ship: Deadshot tends to get this from Joker/Harley shippers.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In an early issue Rick Flag and Amanda Waller get into a fight over mind-wiping old Suicide Squad members so they don't reveal information about the squad. Mind-wiping to hide secrets would become a much more serious problem when regular heroes start doing it in Identity Crisis (2004). Even weirder, Waller of all people eventually relents and decides mind-wiping is too extreme.
  • In Issue 26, Flag sneaks into a Quraci military base and detonates a nuclear bomb, destroying it and killing himself. Four years later, the entire country of Qurac would be annihilated by a much more powerful nuclear device at the hands of Cheshire.
• Love to Hate: The only reason why Captain Boomerang keeps surviving missions is because he’s too hilarious to kill off.
• Magnificent Bastard: Amanda Waller, also known as "The Wall", is a genius specialist who is ruthlessly dedicated to protecting her country by any means necessary. Forming the Suicide Squad, Waller sends them on mission after mission, making endless plans to eliminate their targets and to complete their missions, while not hesitating to sacrifice them. Known for a ruthless, intimidating nature, Waller is one of the few who can even intimidate Batman and when she finds herself being taken over by the Thinker cap, she shatters it as not to let anything else control her. Waller is even one of the few mortals capable of staring down Darkseid himself, and whenever she falls from power, she knows all she has to do is wait for when they give her authority again out of the inevitable need for someone like Waller to do the work nobody else will.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Captain Boomerang crosses it early in the Ostrander run when he allows another squad member to get gunned down simply because he personally didn't care for her.
  • Ostrander’s version of Poison Ivy crosses it when she mind controls and repeated sexually assaults Count Vertigo.
• My Real Daddy: While David Vern Reed and Rew Schwartz may have created Deadshot, it is ultimately John Ostrander to who the character owes most of his defining traits and popularity among readers.
• Newer Than They Think:
  • Despite being viewed as the center of Deadshot's character by many people in recent years, his daughter wasn't formally introduced until the 2005 Deadshot miniseries (55 years after Deadshot was created and 17 years after the character was redefined by John Ostrander).
  • The head bombs never showed up at all in Ostrander’s original run. The closest equivalent were bombs strapped to the arms of select inmates that were either new to the team or had proven themselves untrustworthy and even then they were only used once (non-lethally).
• Nightmare Fuel: In the New 52: as of issue 6, Yo-yo is still alive inside King Shark's stomach and he appears briefly to beg for help.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: An opinion often given by fans of Amanda Waller. Under Ostrander she’s a nuanced, traumatized Jerk with a Heart of Gold who puts her career on the line to save the Squad, hires Flag and Simon intentionally to curb her worst impulses, and is willing to defy the US government when she thinks they’ve crossed a line. Under almost anyone else she tends to be flanderized into an amoral sociopath who either cares only for her own advancement or the benefit of the United States government, blackmails and conscripts heroes, and commits atrocities without a second thought.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The New 52 reboot of Suicide Squad didn't make the best first impression. A lot of the people who would have eagerly supported such a book were put off by Secret Six getting canceled seemingly to be replaced by the new Squad, and the new costumes (particularly for Harley Quinn) were... not well-received. Since the book officially launched, it has attracted a fair share of complaints for its characterizations that seem a bit off and for what some consider to be pointless design changes, such as Amanda Waller's slimming down.
  • The 2021 DC Infinite Frontier relaunch also proved to be divisive, primarily with the announcement that Conner Kent would become a member of the Squad. The Fandom Rivalry between Conner and Jonathan Kent spilled over here, as fans of the former accused DC of placing Conner on a team of villains as proof of the favoritism to the latter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Windfall joins the team with some cool powers, rich history within the comics, and a recent Sympathetic Murderer backstory which was already showing signs of powerful story potential. Then, almost as soon as she joined the team, she gets killed off in a contrived and non-impactful way.
  • Jog (of the Revolutionaries era) can feel underutilized, especially in relation to all of the other speedsters out there who Jog's powers contrast with.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Captain Boomerang is truly heinous character, but he always receives a nice dose of karma whenever he tries to pull something off and is hilarious to write and read.

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