Harley's Crew (Harley Quinn) | Supervillains (Legion of Doom) | Superheroes | Others
Harley Quinn (Dr. Harleen Quinzel)
"I have friends that love and care about me. I'm moving on with my life with the people that matter. And that ain't you, puddin'!"
Voiced by: Kaley Cuoco (English), Dorothée Pousséo (European French)
An Arkham psychologist turned supervillain after falling in love with one of her patients, The Joker. At the start of the show, she finally realizes how toxic her relationship with the Joker actually is, with him being a narcissist who cares more about getting Batman's attention than even her being alive, and attempts to set off on a new life and villainous career of her own.
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A-D
- Accidental Murder: In Season 4, Harley kills Nightwing by strangling him with the friendship bracelet she made for him, but it was actually an accident because Harley was sleepwalking at the time and didn't even remember that she killed him until she saw her own memories with Psycho's powers.
- Act of True Love: In "There's No Place to Go But Down," Harley wants to take all the blame for taking down half of the Injustice League so Ivy doesn't go to prison with her. Later, Harley is ready to jump to her own death so Ivy can escape from their pit prison and have a happy married life with Kite Man. All this culminates in Harley and Ivy realizing they are in love and kiss in the heat of the moment.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: This version of Harley Quinn follows her partnership with Poison Ivy, as Harley wants to overshadow the Joker for once while still coming to terms with the abusive reality of their relationship. In season 2, Harley has to learn to trust men and understand what a healthy relationship looks like. She does this because the Joker's abuse tainted her view of relationships and left her with doubts about what an ideal relationship is. note
- Adaptational Backstory Change: The first incarnation of Harley that's shown to be clearly disturbed long before turning to a life of crime. Other adaptations showed that Harley wasn't exactly the most moral person, but she was relatively sane before meeting Joker.
- Adaptational Badass: Previous versions of Harley Quinn were incredibly competent but still relied on being partnered with other characters or thugs to stand a real chance in a fight. This version manages to take on the Joker's entire gang by herself and come out on top with only a few minor injuries. It's downplayed later on however as she struggles more with the actual supervillains and superheroes, who naturally have more abilities that could pose a threat to her. Still, Harley ends up pulling off quite a few victories here that she never would have in pretty much all of her other incarnations.
- Adaptational Intelligence: In a subtle way concerning her past as a psychiatrist. Most versions of her origin story have her as naive and easily-manipulated New Meat in Arkham, and one who was implied to have slept her way to her doctorate. Here, she actually was very competent at her job prior to meeting the Joker, able to make breakthroughs with patients written off as a lost cause by others such as Poison Ivy. She's also pretty accurate, albeit in a roundabout way, about Ivy and Kite Man's relationship.
- Adaptational Nice Girl: While she isn't a full fledged hero like she is in a few other adaptations of the character, she's still more morally sound than a lot of her tradition portrayals. This Harley has standards, cares for her friends, and will even team up with Batman at times.
- Adaptational Skimpiness: Harley has yet another run-in with this trope, wearing an outfit similar to her New 52 and Rebirth versions. It's even contrasted with her Animated Series outfit, which she wears at the beginning of the series.
- Adaptational Villainy: As far as we know, most versions of Harley were fairly normal women prior to meeting the Joker. A trip into Harley's mindscape in "Being Harley Quinn" reveals that she's had Ax-Crazy tendencies since she was a kid. It's even implied she killed an Alpha Bitch for spreading a rumor that she lost her virginity to a horse.
- Adapted Out: This continuity's version of her family omits her niece Jenny and her nephew Nicky due to her brother Barry dying before he could have children, with her other brothers Frankie and Ezzie being left out as well.
- Aesop Amnesia: Deconstructed. For all of Season 1, Ivy repeatedly tries to drill it into Harley's head that the Joker is bad news, and that she should dump him and stay gone. Harley appears to accept it at first, but when she briefly appears to relapse, Ivy gives Harley a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how Harley never seems to learn that Ivy thinks that Harley truly deserves better than Joker. The fact that Harley keeps going back to Joker pushes her crew away from her, to the point that the lesson finally manages to stick only after Harley realizes that she's in love with Ivy.
- Affectionate Nickname: Ivy calls her "Harls".
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Deconstructed. She's initially attracted to the Joker because of his dangerous and unique aesthetic, but she eventually finds out that his violent and uncaring nature extends to her as well. The first episode has her realize that Joker loves Batman, not her, which helps her finally snap out of it.
- Always Second Best: While with the Joker, Harley believed he always loved her until she realised that his one and only was always his archnemesis, Batman. The realisation that she was the Joker's second best gave her the desire to overshadow him for once in the criminal underworld.
- Anti-Hero: Harley started with ambitions to be a top-tier villain, then tried switching to become a full time hero, but came up short both times. So by the end of season 4, she settles into doing things her own way, being both and neither.
- Ascended Fangirl: Even before joining the Joker as his top enforcer, Harley was so fascinated by him that she wrote a thesis on the evil clown.
- Ax-Crazy: As one might expect from the Joker's former top enforcer, she's short-tempered, unstable, and gleefully, eye-wateringly violent. As if to accentuate how violently insane she is, her happiest memory is apparently chopping one of her dolls' heads off with a cleaver when she was six.
- Badass in Distress:
- The first episode of Season 2 has Harley being rescued by her crew after she was encased in ice by the Injustice League.
- In The Eat, Bang, Kill Tour comics, Harley is captured by the poisonous villain Mephitic to lure out Poison Ivy.
- Badass Normal: She doesn't have any superpowers beyond being an extremely talented gymnast, but she's the most technically proficient fighter and battlefield tactician of her crew by a long way, and extremely willing to fight dirty.
- Batter Up!: Her weapon is a painted wooden baseball bat. It's devastating against ordinary humans, but having it shatter against enemies with Super-Toughness is her equivalent of The Worf Barrage.
- Battle Couple: She and Ivy become a couple in the Season 2 finale. The Eat, Bang, Kill Tour comics show them repeatedly fighting together and saving each other while they're on their "honeymoon".
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Several times she gets into fights, and gets hit hard enough to get a bloody nose, but is perfectly fine a few seconds later.
- Benevolent Boss: In contrast with the Joker, Harley treats her villain teammates with care and respect instead of disposable Mooks.
- Best Friend: She was Ivy's First Friend and remains her closest friend.
- Betty and Veronica: In Season 2, Ivy is torn between her feelings for her friend Harley and her fiancé Kite Man. Harley is the Veronica because she's a reckless, wild and murderous villainess who just got out of an abusive relationship with a psychotic clown. This is why Ivy rejects Harley's advances; she loves being friends with Harley, but Harley's too wild and short-sighted for a long term relationship. By the end of season 2, Harley makes an effort to clean up her messes, to be a better person and as a result she wins Ivy's heart.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Her goal is to take over the Joker's place as the top supervillain of Gotham. Since the show she stars in is mainly a Black Comedy, she only succeeds at being a regular criminal at best or a nuisance at worst. Her attempts at antagonizing big-league superheroes like Superman and Batman end with Harley either being ignored or getting the shit beaten out of her. Attempts to join the Legion of Doom also blow in her face when the Joker pulls rank and humiliates Harley to the other supervillains, and even after becoming an agent of Darkseid she concludes she doesn't have the heart for proper villainy, ultimately deciding to join the Batfamily.
- Big Sister Instinct: Surprisingly, Harley quickly becomes protective of Bruce's younger self in his mind. She protects the boy from the mugger that haunts his memory and makes a serious attempt to help him work through his trauma.
- The Brute: She used to be this for the Joker, acting as his primary muscle when he can't swamp his enemies in goons. Once she turns on him, his mooks don't stand a chance.
- Bullying a Dragon: She mentions an Alpha Bitch humiliated Harley by spreading rumors that said Harley lost her virginity to a horse. It's not specified how Harley retaliated, but she does mention the cops interrogated her for hours about what happened to the student.
- Butt-Monkey: She is used as a punching bag by Gotham's other villains, especially the Joker.
- Byronic Hero: A troubled, brooding, selfish outcast whose passions and strive towards a goal cause trouble for Gotham City and the rest of the world. She wants to be respected as a villain, to be in control of her own life, and to cause Apocalypse Anarchy. Harley is passionate, determined, and driven towards this goal, but it leads to all kinds of trouble for both her and her crew. On top of that, she can't go all the way with the worst aspects of supervillainy, leading to a self-defeating mindset.
- The Cameo: Her voice is briefly heard in Titans (2018).
- Card-Carrying Villain: Downplayed. She desires to become one of the most feared villains of all, but doesn't actually have it in her to follow through with the big league supervillainy that entails, and often finds herself sickened by the actions of said villains.
- Carry a Big Stick: She initially wields a giant hammer, but it gets destroyed in battle after she dumps the Joker for good. She swaps it out for a wooden baseball bat, which she eventually paints to match her outfit.
- Celeb Crush: She had a big crush on Frankie Muniz as a kid, having dreamed of kidnapping him and tricking him into getting her pregnant.
- Chaotic Stupid: A Deconstruction at the beginning of Season 2. Having taken down the Joker and Gotham being left in ruins, Harley has the perfect chance to rise up as the top villain and completely take control of the city. Instead, she chooses to indulge in the Apocalypse Anarchy and outright refuses to bring back organized crime because she loathes any form of order. The result is that the Injustice League traps her in ice when she refuses to share rulership over Gotham with them and Harley ends up regretting not taking the city for herself sooner.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: She's not in the same league as the true DC Lightning Bruisers like Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. But by ordinary human standards, Harley is still incredibly fast, strong, and tough. She can dodge gunfire, break bones in a single hit, take an impressive beating, and even fall off the side of a mountain, and walk away with only minor injuries. While she did fall into the same vat of chemicals as the Joker, the show generally treats both their transformations as largely cosmetic, and points to her career as a competitive gymnast as the reason for her combat prowess.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Harley has always been a crazy nutjob who's too unpredictable to be messed with. After a Mook explodes right in front of her, Harley talks nonchalantly with Ivy about how best to dump the Joker, ignoring the blood and guts everywhere.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: She was a trained psychologist and expertly diagnosed many of the Arkham inmates' mental problems, but it takes her a good long while to acknowledge and confront the serious mental problems she herself has.
- Color Motif: Carrying over from her trademark jester costume and a playing card motif, her outfit is all in red and black.
- Costume Evolution: She starts out in her classic jester costume, but severs ties with the Joker and swaps it out for her Stripperiffic New 52 getup.
- Creepy Child: In her happiest childhood memories, Young Harleen's idea of playing house with her dolls involves mommy (who she gives her mother's name, Sharon) accusing daddy of coming home smelling of "alcohol and whore" and then chopping his head off with a cleaver.
- Cuckoosnarker: She's a nutjob, but she gets a few snarky quips here and there. She saves the most of her snark for Batman and the Joker, implying that the former "fucks bats" and personally insulting the latter's manhood.
- Dark Action Girl: She's the most battle-oriented and physically strong villainess in the series. And damn that she's brutal to those who take her on.
- Dating Catwoman: Season 3 ends with Ivy becoming the new leader of the Legion of Doom while Harley joins the Bat Family to try being a hero. Surprisingly, Harley and Ivy stay in a loving and mutually supportive relationship despite now being in opposite alignments.
- The Defroster: When she first met Ivy, the latter was full of anger and bitterness. Harleen was the only one who showed her compassion and gave her a plant so she could escape from Arkham. This helped Ivy open up to Harley and they became best friends during Harleen's therapy sessions.
- Ditzy Genius: She is an expert psychologist and competent battle tactician, but her interactions with the Joker show that she's fairly easy to manipulate.
- Does Not Like Men: Zig Zagging, while Harley is comfortable with employing men and working with them, her prejudice acts up when she sees men in relationships. Growing up, her father was emotionally neglectful as he forced her to sacrifice her dreams as an acrobat because he bet against her and was under threat from the mob. Her relationship with the Joker didn't help either because he was abusive and manipulative, causing Harley to distrust men under the belief that they share his abusive ways. Harley doubted the relationship between Kite Man and Poison Ivy because she believed she could do better but was eventually won over by his awkward, yet persistant charm. When she finds out Mr. Freeze had his terminally ill wife cryogenically frozen, she immediately assumed she was actually a hostage and that Mr. Freeze saw her only as property. When Freeze calms down and reassures Harley that he's willing to do anything to save Nora, Harley understands that her prejudice isn't healthy and starts taking steps to improve herself.
- Drives Like Crazy: Her driving when stealing the Batmobile is wild. It helps that the Batmobile is an arsenal full of weapons.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite the fact that she freed the Justice League from their imprisonment and was the one who actually stopped Dr. Psycho and his parademon army, she is not shown any appreciation by the city of Gotham. The Justice League are awarded for saving the day, when it was actually Harley. Likewise, Wonder Woman shows no gratitude toward her for saving Themyscira. This changes at the end of season three when the citizens of Gotham thanks her for saving them from the plant Zombie Apocalypse caused by Bruce Wayne and exploited by Poison Ivy.
- Dumb Blonde: Averted. She had this reputation as the Joker's sidekick, but it's wrong. She graduated her high school as valedictorian and was, by all accounts, a perfectly capable clinical psychologist. Her problem is not that she's dumb, but that she hasn't had much reason to value or use her own intelligence in a long time, and is still a little rusty at it. That, and for all of her intelligence, Harley is still insane.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Subverted. Harley tells Ivy she loves her when she lets go of her to fall into a pit of flames so Ivy alone can escape. Fortunately, Ivy saves her.
E-N
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- She objects to Sy Borgman's suggestion of committing war crimes.
- She's genuinely unnerved and opposed to the Queen of Fables' brutal and horrifying methods, which involve And I Must Scream tortures and wanton murder for its own sake.
- She apologies for accidentally giving a man cancer from a cancer ray.
- When she infiltrates Bruce Wayne's mind to find where he'd taken Frank, the level of psychological trauma she finds there upsets her so much that she starts trying to help him get through it.
- She's horrified to find out that she was the one who murdered Nightwing while she was sleepwalking, even though Nightwing wasn't very nice to her.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Domestic Abuse she suffered at the hands of the Joker, and likely her parents' extremely neglectful and dysfunctional relationship, has left Harley struggling to even comprehend what a healthy romantic relationship looks like. She's prone to Psychological Projection come Season 2 when she sees couples together. She questions the quality of Ivy and Kite Man's relationship, and when she finds out about Nora, she immediately assumes Mister Freeze froze her to keep her for himself.
- Evil Is Petty: Her initial motive is trying to work her way to become Gotham's top villain so she can rub her success in the Joker's face.
- Evil Versus Evil: While she wants to be the baddest villain in Gotham, Harley fights and takes down other villains most of the time, such as Joker, Queen of Fables, and the Injustice League. This causes Batgirl to think Harley is an Anti-Hero, which Harley vehemently denies. At first, anyways. Harley does get a little more heroic as time goes on, but she's still a bad person.
- Evil Virtues: Loyalty and Determination. Harley may be a villain but she is a loyal friend. And she never quits.
- Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: After her costume switch in the first episode, Harley starts wearing prominent pink and light blue eyeshadow, which matches the colors on her twin pigtails.
- Family of Choice: After she finds out her parents are scumbags who would gladly kill her for her bounty, Harley declares they aren't her family. Instead, she decides the only family she has in the world is her crew, and tries everything she can to make amends with them.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Wrath. Her breakup with the Joker left Harley with the desire to best him and prove herself as her own person. She also shows him Cruel Mercy by leaving him alive; this is ostensibly so he can watch her succeed, but it just leads to more trouble with the Joker alive. Prior to her character development, Harley disregarded her personal relationships due to being more focused on overshadowing Joker.
- Naivete. In Season 2, she has trouble understanding romance because Ivy's and Mr Freeze's romantic relationships were nowhere near as abusive as her relationship with the Joker. Harley thawed out Nora because she believed she was being held hostage and she tries breaking up Kite Man and Ivy because she didn't trust his intentions with her and believed she could do better.
- First Friend: With Ivy, on top of being Best Friends. Harley is the first human being Ivy ever opened up to and wanted to trust after a lifetime of being rejected by humanity.
- First Girl Wins: No matter how much Ivy honestly liked Kite Man, Harley came into Ivy's life first and they had a much stronger bond way before Kite Man began dating Ivy. In the end, Kite Man himself realizes Ivy really wants to be with Harley despite her denials and calls off their wedding, leading to Ivy running off with Harley.
- Florence Nightingale Effect:
- As standard for the character, Harley first met the Joker when he was assigned as her patient in Arkham Asylum. He told her sob stories to buy her sympathy and make her think only she could help and love him, which let him take advantage of Harley's own wish of being needed by someone.
- Retroactively, she also has this with Poison Ivy. In this version, Ivy was Dr. Harleen's patient when she still worked at Arkham Asylum and she was the one who helped Ivy work through her misanthropy. Years later, Harley realizes she has fallen in love with Ivy.
- Forceful Kiss: To convince herself that her kiss with Ivy meant nothing like Ivy says, she starts kissing her crew and Batgirl at random, to their discomfort.
- Freudian Excuse Denial: At first, it's made look like Harleen was a perfectly sane and respectable person until the Joker's manipulation and abuse transformed her into a psychotic and murderous villainess. However, "Being Harley Quinn" has her go on a Journey to the Center of the Mind, which reveals that Harley has had Ax-Crazy tendencies ever since she was a child, long before Joker ever got to her; her attempts at playing with dolls involved a wife murdering a husband for cheating, she stalked her Celeb Crush to the point legal actions needed to be taken, and she may have killed a girl at her camp for spreading humiliating rumors about her. The final memory reveals that Harley in fact jumped into the chemical vat of her own volition, but repressed that part since it had always been easier to give agency to the Joker and blame him for her turn to villainy. In the end, the Joker didn't corrupt her so much as reawaken what was already there and Harley acknowledges that she is responsible for her own life and had a choice every step of the way. Neither the Joker nor her "fucked up parents" made Harleen Quinzel into Harley Quinn; she made herself.
- Friendship Denial: She insists she and Batgirl are friendly enemies, not friends.At the end of Season 3, she drops the "enemy" part and becomes Batgirl's teammate.
- Girlish Pigtails: After getting a costume switch, she ties her hair up into pigtails. She also had them as a child as revealed in "Being Harley Quinn".
- Glory Seeker: After she leaves the Joker, most of Harley's actions are for the sake of seeking praise and recognition for her villainy, be it from the public, fellow supervillains, or superheroes.
- Going Commando: As evidenced by the scene where she ends up hanging by her shorts in the Batcave, Harley isn't wearing any underwear.
- Good Costume Switch: She switches her Stripperiffic villain outfit for a more modest hero outfit when she joins the Bat-Family in Season 4.
- Goofy Print Underwear: Harley is shown to wear pink panties with red hearts after her dress is damaged in a fight during The 83rd Annual Villy Awards.
- Grew a Spine: The Eat, Bang, Kill Tour comics show that Harley is placing more value on herself and is less prone to Extreme Doormat behavior than before. When Ivy gets mad at Harley for things that are really Harley's fault, Harley says she's sorry and corrects her behavior. But when Ivy gets mad at Harley for things that either aren't her fault or are nitpicking, Harley is willing to stick up for herself.
- Harmful to Minors: A flashback in "Being Harley Quinn" shows young Harleen in front of a window and watching her father's "business meeting" which involved two men brutally beating him up and taking the money from his wallet. Apparently this was just "work" for Harley's father, implying this was a regular occurrence throughout her childhood.
- Hates Their Parent: Harley absolutely loathes her deadbeat mobster of a father. Since he's the reason why she was forced to lose a gymnastics competition she wanted to win badly just so he could win a bet he made against her, it's hard to not see why she hates him so much. To top it off, just when she starts to think her father isn't so bad, he tries to kill her for money. After her mom joins in on trying to kill her, she hates both of them combined, declaring them to not be her family and leaving and declaring them Not Worth Killing.
- Heel–Face Turn: Season 3 ends with Ivy making Harley realize she's more of a hero than a villain now. Harley then gives in to her wish of helping people and joins the Bat Family.
- Heel Realization: In Season 4, Harley tries her hardest to prove that she can be a hero and a member of the Bat-Family, despite her destructive nature and her developing a dangerous case of sleepwalking due to repressing her villainous impulses. After she discovers she murdered Nightwing while sleepwalking, Harley realizes she is still a villain at her core and quits the Bat-Family.
- Hero with an F in Good: Even when working with the Bat Family, she's very overly violent and the others have trouble reeling her in. She even ends up strangling her fellow hero Nightwing while sleepwalking, which convinces her that she's not meant to be a hero after all.
- Horrible Judge of Character: This is someone who fell in love with the Joker, after all. She also assumed Mr. Freeze had imprisoned his wife, only to find out she was sick and he really was trying to save her, though that is somewhat justified given that her poor history with boyfriends and her terrible parents have made it difficult for her to comprehend what a happy couple looks like.
- Human Popsicle: In the opening of Season 2, Harley is captured by the Injustice League and spends two months encased in ice.
- I Hate Past Me: When she takes journey to Batman's mind, Harley encounters her past self in his memories. She's very annoyed to see herself as the Joker's manipulated henchwoman and even finds her old accent irritating.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: At her core, all Harley wants is someone who sees her value as a person and acknowledges her accomplishments after her own parents constantly demeaned her efforts and goals. What attracted her to the Joker was him recognizing her thesis on him and spunk during their first meeting and stayed with him for so long because he convinced her that she was loved and needed by him, when all he really wanted was to control her. Eventually, Harley realizes she wants her best friend Ivy's love and is heartbroken by Ivy rejecting her and choosing to go through with marrying Kite Man.
- I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: She declares this in the Season 4 finale:Superman: I always knew you were a hero.Harley: I'm better than a hero. I'm Harley Fucking Quinn!
- Informed Kindness: Harley is told by Ivy, her crew (and even Batgirl) that despite being a supervillain, she's a good person. Harley is certainly a better person than many of the villains she faces but her actions, and their consequences, are pretty awful. She's selfish, foolhardy, volatile and most of her decisions have directly or indirectly killed countless innocent people. Quinn even invades earth with an army of parademons, with the intent of going on a mass killing spree, just to distract from her feelings for Poison Ivy. Then again, Ivy is obviously biased because she was treated like shit by people and Harley is her Only Friend. As for the others, Batgirl is a Naïve Newcomer who has some Horrible Judge of Character, as seen when she can't find any reason to doubt Harley and Ivy will take Riddler to Arkham instead of taking him prisoner for their self-benefit. However, as stated below she does have a Hidden Heart of Gold and has slowly been taking several levels in kindness over the course of the series.
- It's All About Me: Because of her extreme immaturity, Harley has a bad habit of placing her own interests and goals before those of others, which more than once comes at the expense of her friends. Ivy at one point lampshades this by criticizing Harley for never showing interest in anything that isn't about her.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She may be a proud villain and have moments of impulsiveness and immaturity, but every now and then she does have moments that prove she can be a good person if she wasn’t a bad guy and she genuinely cares about her crew, especially Ivy. Later on, she gains a sense of compassion that drives her to try and protect innocent civilians, even though she still can't get rid of her destructive instincts and can't become a proper hero because of it.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: She comes dangerously close to this in "Inner (Para) Demons" where she lets Psycho talk her into making a deal with Darkseid. Harley is willing to threw her few morals out of the window to unleash a Parademon army on Earth and kill people for no reason. It's until Ivy intervenes that Harley realizes senseless murder won't give her what she really wants: Ivy.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: She drops a lot of F-bombs.
- Laughably Evil: Between her violent tendencies and just out-there personality, it's impossible not to get a laugh out of her.
- The Leader: A combination of Charismatic and Headstrong. In season 2 the crew basically falls apart when she's temporarily put on ice. Shark lampshades how they depended on her leadership.
- Lightning Bruiser: She's fast, acrobatic and formidable with her baseball bat.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Harley's father (and mother) is a misogynistic Jerkass who has always been dismissive of her dreams and has no problems trying to kill her just to get money out of it. Harley blames her unhealthy obsession with abusive and manipulative men like the Joker on her asshole of a father.
- Locked into Strangeness: Her hair and skin were bleached white by being submerged in the same chemicals that created the Joker.
- Love Epiphany: She realizes she's in love with her friend Ivy after their kiss at the end of "There's No Place to Go But Down." Ivy refuses to admit there was any meaning to their kiss and continues her engagement with Kite Man while pretending nothing happened with Harley, resulting in Harley trying to take over the world with the Parademons to vent out her romantic frustration.
- Love Hurts: Harley eventually realizes she loves Ivy romantically, but Ivy is already engaged to Kite Man and refuses to acknowledge the mutual feelings between her and Harley. This leaves Harley frustrated and sad, almost driving her to try and take over Earth with Parademons to distract herself from the pain. It's only reinforced after she finally confesses to Ivy, only for Ivy to turn her down and say that a long-lasting relationship wouldn't work out between the two of them. She tries to put on a strong front as Ivy leaves with Kite Man, only to break down into tears as soon as they're gone.
- Love Makes You Evil: While she always had a repressed dark side, it was falling in love with Joker what drove to embrace her murderous impulses and become a villainess. Later, thinking she can't get Ivy because the latter already has Kite Man, Harley makes a deal with Darkseid and uses a Parademon army to massacre the people in Gotham.
- Loving a Shadow: What attracted Harley to the Joker was envisioning him as a man traumatized by an abusive childhood and who needed her for love and comfort. It's until after her relationship with him ends that Harley learns the story Joker told her about his father beating him wasn't even his but Ivy's. Soon after that, Harley realizes Ivy is the one she truly loves.
- Ma'am Shock: She's annoyed when Robin calls her old.
- Made of Iron: She regularly takes punishment way more than her lithe figure should be able to take. In "So, You Need a Crew?", she got thrown off a train by the Joker's goons down into a chasm, at which she only expressed annoyance and walked out with nothing more than messed up hair and some minor bruises.
- Mad Love: As in most incarnations, she's madly in love with the Joker and is completely blind to the fact that he sees her as nothing but a disposable asset to be manipulated for his benefit, stubbornly insisting he does love her even though he has abandoned her to get arrested and locked up more than once. Unlike other versions, this series starts with Harley getting much needed help from Poison Ivy to finally open her eyes to the truth that the Joker cares for no one but himself and Batman, which leads to Harley breaking up with him for good.
- Makeup Is Evil: The one supervillain character in the show who wears eyeshadow and heavy red lipstick.
- Man Bites Man: When she has most of body except for her head and right hand trapped in ice, Harley uses her teeth to attack the Penguin and bite his nose off.
- Mask of Sanity: Given context provided in the episode "Being Harley Quinn", it's implied that this was part of her psychologist persona, seen in "All the Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues". She was clearly very messed up as a child and teenager, but was put together and somewhat promising as a young doctor. As a result, the Joker luring her into a life of crime ends up coming across less as him corrupting her and more like he simply reawakened what was already there.
- Matchmaker Crush: In the first half of Season 2, Harley is all for Ivy and Kite Man getting married because she thinks that'll make Ivy happy, even encouraging Ivy to accept the proposal despite Ivy not being sure she wants that herself. Midway through the season, Harley realizes she has romantic feelings for Ivy and sort of asks her to cancel the wedding with Kite Man so they can hook up. However, Ivy has already convinced herself Kite Man is her safe option for a stable married life and rejects Harley's confession. They still get together after Kite Man calls off his wedding with Ivy.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The series begins with Harley becoming fed up with the Joker's abuse once she finally realizes that he never even loved her. She then quits being his minion so she can make her own career as a stand-alone supervillainess.
- Morality Chain: In Season 3, after Ivy becomes Drunk with Power from the Green and tries to terraform Gotham with a Zombie Apocalypse, her love for Harley keeps her from crossing the
Moral Event Horizon as she undoes the Zombie Apocalypse to save Harley's life. - Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Played With. The series constantly mentions Harley is a legitimate doctor, but she's never shown to be especially villainous as one, unless Joker's involved.
- Ms. Fanservice: She's very beautiful and wears outfits that flatter her figure, and one episode has her accidentally expose herself. Lampshaded by Calendar Man's wife who calls Harley a "porn clown."
- My God, What Have I Done?: Harley has been growing more a conscience and is horrified when she screws up big time.
- One was where her psychological projections and corrupted view of romance meant she nearly killed Nora Fries and forced Victor to do a Heroic Sacrifice to cure her, resulting in his death and widowing her.
- When Dr. Psycho shows Gotham Harley and Poison Ivy sleeping together as spite for his loss, she can only look ashamed when the betrayed-looking and hurt Kite Man stares at the two.
- With Dr. Psycho's help, she looks for her memory of the night Nightwing died and she's horrified to learn she killed Nightwing during one of her violent sleepwalking episodes.
- Nature Versus Nurture: The episode "Being Harley Quinn" delves into Harley's life before becoming the Joker's henchwoman and brings into question just how much her villainy is a result of nurture. It's all but stated that young Harleen had an unhappy childhood with an extremely dysfunctional family. However, it's heavily implied her Ax-Crazy impulses are nature. Her attempts at playing with dolls involved a wife murdering a husband for cheating, she stalked her Celeb Crush to the point legal actions needed to be taken, and she may have killed a girl at her camp for spreading humiliating rumors about her. Harley believed she became a villain only because of the Joker to the point she convinced herself he pushed her into the bath of chemicals when she had jumped willingly, but towards the end of the episode, she fully realizes that she always had a choice. At most, one could interpret that the Joker only brought out her dark side to its fullest.
- Never Hurt an Innocent: By Season 3, Harley has developed enough empathy to protest against endangering innocent lives. She ends up trying to stop Ivy from terraforming Gotham because Bruce's intervention caused Ivy to try and turn all the citizens into her plant zombies.
- Never My Fault: It takes a lot for Harley to accept how her flaws and mistakes cause troubles for her and her personal relationships. All her crew leaves her because she ignored them and failed to keep her promises to help them in favor of letting herself fall into the Joker's game of abuse. Afterwards, Harley complains about them abandoning her without acknowledging how her choice to hang out with the Joker instead of her friends got her into that mess. One of the biggest parts of her Character Development is learning to own up to her actions and take responsibility to become a better person who can have a healthy relationship with Ivy.
- No-Respect Guy: She's an Olympic level acrobat with a degree in psychology and years of experience in combat. Despite this, most people consider her a joke, and refuse to consider her anything other than the Joker's girlfriend or a generic thug.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Played with. Unlike previous animated incarnations, this version of Harley Quinn typically speaks with a flat Midwest affect, but begins consciously affecting her old Brooklyn accent when she visits her parents in Bensonhurst, suggesting she changed it after moving to Gotham.
O-Y
- Official Couple: She and Ivy officially get together at the end of Season 2.
- One-Woman Army: In the first episode, Harley goes against the Joker's gang and — despite being hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned — kicks their asses and walks away unscathed.
- Outlaw Couple: After the Season 2 finale, Harley and Ivy go on a "honeymoon" while they're being chased by Commissioner Gordon.
- Perky Female Minion: She initially served the role of the Joker's adoring moll and henchwoman. After discovering that the Joker never really cared about her at all and was just using her as a means to an end, she sets out to defy this role and become an independent villainess in her own right.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: Her desire to fast-track herself to recognition and overall immaturity mean that her crew have to deal with her schemes frequently escalating.
- Pretty Freeloaders: After her ninth broken TV, you must ponder why exactly Ivy keeps Harley rent free.
- Prim and Proper Bun: She wore her hair like this in her Dr. Harleen Quinzel persona, as part of her effort at trying to appear sane and professional.
- Psychological Projection: When she sees Mister Freeze going on about how much he loves his terminally ill wife who he keeps trapped in a block of ice (to keep her from dying, mind you), Harley immediately assumes he's the same kind of abusive man like the Joker who treats his lover as property, going as far as accusing Mister Freeze of having lied about Nora being ill and keeping her trapped against her will. Once she sees Mister Freeze and his wife do truly love and care about each other, Harley understands their relationship is nothing like the one she had with the Joker.
- Psycho Psychologist: Subverted. While Harley is a former psychologist, as a villain she's not very complicated, preferring to smash first and ask questions later. When she does use her psychology skills, she ends up doing a lot more good than harm, whether it's convincing herself to dump Joker or talk down Bruce Wayne after he nearly causes a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: She's incredibly immature and unrestrained, in addition to being a dangerous supervillain.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: She wears a black and red costume, (both her original costume and the New 52 costume) and is the Villain Protagonist.
- Redemption Failure: In Season 4, Harley tries to pull off a Heel–Face Turn and become a member of the Bat-Family, but it doesn't take long before she starts realizing that she sucks at being a hero. She ends up quitting the Bat-Family after she finds out she killed Nightwing while she was sleepwalking.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: She's the noisy and uncontrollable Red Oni to Poison Ivy's level-headed and sardonic Blue Oni.
- Relationship Upgrade: She hooks up with her best friend Poison Ivy at the end of season 2.
- Repressed Memories: In her Journey to the Center of the Mind, Harley's repressed memories are locked up in a replica of Arkham Asylum. There, she's repressed her memory of the Joker shoving her into a vat of chemicals that bleached her skin white. The part she repressed was that she jumped in willingly, since it had always been easier to give agency to the Joker and blame him for her turn to villainy. After confronting this, she takes responsibility for her life choices and re-defines her origin story as the day she walked out on him.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Harley was initially against the relationship between Kite Man and Poison Ivy because she thinks Poison Ivy settled too early and could do better. While Harley's grudge against the relationship stems from her trauma from her relationship with the Joker, and it's more directed at Kite Man than Ivy, she's right. Poison Ivy is slowly opening up to others and getting through her misanthropic outlook; she did love Kite Man, she just settled too early without knowing what she truly wanted in a relationship. Kite Man is a good guy, he just wasn't the right person for Ivy.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Her goal in Season 1 was to get revenge on the Joker for his abuse and her goal in Season 2 is to get revenge on the Injustice League for usurping her.
- Satellite Love Interest: Defied. Harley is fed up of being written off as "the Joker's girlfriend" and is aiming to become a competent, terrifying villainess in her own right.
- Screw Yourself: Harley forces a kiss on her own clone to distract her.
- Secret-Keeper: After she learns that Bruce Wayne is Batman, she promises him that she will not tell anyone about his secret, citing doctor-patient confidentiality.
- Self-Serving Memory:
- She remembered the Joker proposed marriage to her in the middle of a romantic dance. Her psychiatrist self interrupts the memory to force Harley Quinn recall what really happened; instead of a ring, the Joker gave her a grenade and used her as living bait in one of his fights with Batman.
- She also edited her own memory to make it seem like the Joker had pushed her into the chemicals that made her into Harley Quinn, when in fact she went in willingly.
- She-Fu: Harley utilizes a lot of acrobatic flips and tricks in her fighting. The champion gymnast aspect of her character is usually glossed over, but it is emphasized in "Bensonhurst" as her dad calls out a bunch of gymnastics moves that she uses in her fight against the mob. In flashbacks shown in "All the Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues", her skills are shown even back when Harley was still Dr. Quinzel.
- Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Has this dynamic with Poison Ivy, with Harley using her bat and acrobatics for close-range combat while Ivy uses her plant powers from a distance.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: After she starts dating Poison Ivy, Harley goes absolutely over the top in showering Ivy in love, attention and gifts. Even she admits its an "almost exhausting" amount of affection.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: While she was with the Joker, he made her wear a clown-themed, form-fitting catsuit to show her off as his property. When she severs her ties to him and starts making a name for herself in the underworld; she changes to a short black and red crop top with a black choker around her neck, black and red fingerless leather gloves, black and red tight spandex booty shorts and black and red sneakers. This outfit reflects her sexual liberation from the Joker since she's no longer his property, it's designed in-universe as an affront to her original costume since the original costume covered her entire body and presented her as an object for the joker, and it shows off her eagerness to fight.
- Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!: "Thawing Hearts" reveals that Harley has developed a rather cynical view on true love due to her abusive relationship with the Joker. She initially can't believe Mister Freeze's devotion to his terminally ill wife is genuine, writing him off as yet another controlling man who ruined his woman's life. It's at the end of the episode that Mister Freeze's sacrifice for his wife makes Harley understand what she had with Joker wasn't true love.Harley: True love made me sacrifice my career as a psychologist, permanently change the way I look and almost got me killed, like, so many times. LOVE. IS. BULLSHIT.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: A same-sex example. Once Harley finally gets over her abusive ex-boyfriend Joker, she realizes she's really in love with Ivy, her best friend who truly cares about her and has always been there for her through good and bad times. When confessing to Ivy yet again, Harley tells her she fell in love with her because they always have fun together and Ivy shows her the best version of herself that she can be.
- Sir Swearsalot: This show sure makes good use of its adult rating - Among her crew members, Harley tend to be most crude and vulgar.
- Sleepwalking: Harley develops a serious — and possibly dangerous — problem of this in Season 4. She even strangled Nightwing and wasn't aware of it until Psycho showed the memory to her.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: She had glasses as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, her genius psychiatrist identity.
- Smarter Than You Look: She spent years as a Perky Female Minion who was easily manipulated and fooled by the Joker, but Harley was a genius psychiatrist and proves to be quite clever after she finally dumps him.
- Stalker with a Crush: She was sent to juvenile hall for stalking and threatening to kidnap her Celeb Crush Frankie Muniz. There were also violations of a restraining order involved.
- Stripperiffic: Her bikini-like new outfit is effective for Fanservice, but realistically wouldn't be good for physical combat.
- Superior Successor: Harley manages to be this for her parents as she inherited her bad traits from them, but managed to overcome them. She inherited her violent and criminal tendencies from her father, but Harley is stronger, smarter, more honorable, a better criminal, and has been capable of kicking his ass even before she became a super villain. She inherited her bad taste in men from her mother, but Harley was smart enough to cut ties with the Joker for being an abusive partner while her mother is hopelessly devoted to a gambling husband who's willing to endanger their family for money.
- Swiss-Army Tears: In the Season 1 finale, Harley thinks the tears she shed on Ivy's grave made her come back to life. Ivy reminds Harley they aren't in a Disney movie, but admits that the tears probably did help.
- Taking the Bullet: In the climax of Season 3, she shields Bane from one of Ivy's plant zombies and almost gets turned into a tree as a result.
- Talking to Themself: She occasionally has conversations with her psychiatrist past self. Curiously, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is completely aware that Harley Quinn is stuck in a codependent abusive relationship with a psychopath who doesn't love her and tries to get her hopelessly blind villainess self to see this. Dr. Harleen Quinzel finally gets through to Harley Quinn when the Joker lets her fall into what they think is acid. She does however give bad advice to her villainous self as seen with her suggestion to seek out her Abusive Parents, although Harleen had no way of knowing her parents would try to kill her.
- Terms of Endangerment: In the Season One finale, Harley calls the Joker by his pet name "Puddin'" mockingly before Ivy drops him into a vat of acid.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Her and her crew's constant destruction of Ivy's apartment eventually gets her evicted in Episode 4.
- Token Evil Teammate: Harley joins the Bat Family in Season 4, but her Ax-Crazy tendencies from her days as a villain are still very present. Her teammates disapprove of her killing villains and dating Ivy, who is the new leader of the Legion of Doom.
- Tomato in the Mirror: In Season 4, she helps Barbara investigate who murdered Nightwing. Then Harley is told by her own clone that she killed Nightwing. Harley confirms it when she asks Psycho to look into her memories and watches her sleepwalking self strangle Nightwing.
- Took a Level in Kindness: While still a villain, the first season has Harley gradually realize how selfish a boss and a friend she had been, and resolving to change. This continues into the second season by prioritizing Ivy's happiness with Kite-Man despite her concerns of their relationship's long-term stability and putting her own romantic feelings for Ivy on the back burner for her friend's sake. Harley also comes to value her crew as a Family of Choice, even if she tries not to say it out loud in front of them. This is taken further in the third season when she travels into Bruce Wayne's mind, discovered he's really Batman, and genuinely tries to help him with his mental problems.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Going by the episode "Being Harley Quinn", this version of Harley had... issues since childhood. One flashback shows her playing with dolls as husband and wife, having the wife accuse the husband doll of cheating, and then cutting the husband's head off with a meat cleaver, all implicitly before her teenage years.
- Underestimating Badassery: She gets the idea to rob Aquaman. Despite the show treating him as more of a joke, he is shown to nonetheless be an extremely powerful hero who is out of Harley's league. Prior to that, she tried to pick a fight with Superman, who just ignored her.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Harley and Ivy spend half of Season 2 conflicted by their feelings for each other. Harley realizes she wants Ivy, but Ivy is already engaged to Kite Man and doesn't trust Harley won't break her heart if they start a relationship. After Ivy's wedding to Kite Man is ruined and Harley once again shows her she's working on being a better person, they get together.
- Unscrupulous Hero: She evolves into this by the end of Season 4. She has accepted her destructive and violent tendencies as a part of her, but she still genuinely wants to help people and won't hurt innocent people or leave heroes to die.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: The main character of the show who is not just a supervillain, but also one who is incredibly reckless and refuses to listen to her friend's advice, though the unsympathetic part gets subverted as the series goes on, what with the Joker revealing how low he's willing to sink just to get back at Harley for wounding his pride and her own parents trying to kill her to collect her bounty. While a lot of her misery is her own fault, her actual misery progressively stops being Played for Laughs.
- Use Your Head: In the first episode, Harley fights the Arkham guards while in a straitjacket. During the fight, she headbutts one of the guards in the face, drawing lots of blood, after which she does the same, three times in a row, to a female guard, knocking her out cold.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: She's able to carry around and never lose her smartphone by tucking it into her top
- Villainous Harlequin: More on the anti-heroic side of this trope.
- Villainous Lineage: Her father is a mobster and her mother is completely supportive of it. It's debatable if Harley's turn to villainy and terrible taste in men was a result of this or them just being terrible parents, however. And that's not going into the Troubling Unchildlike Behavior she exhibited on her own.
- Villain Protagonist: Breaking away from the Joker is presented as a woman standing up for herself and taking control of her own life back. However, Harley's ultimate goal is to be a super-villain, upstage the Legion of Doom, and generally cause the downfall of Gotham City, along with the rest of the world. Harley has a lot of personal victories throughout the show, but she's still a bad person. By the end of Season 3, Harley accepts she isn't suited for villainy anymore and joins the Bat Family to give being a hero a try...only for Season 4 to show she is a Hero with an F in Good, and her trying to be a hero screwed her up so badly that her repressed evil instincts forced her to kill Nightwing while she was sleepwalking.
- Wardrobe Malfunction: There's a scene where she winds up hanging by the seat of her pants from a stalactite, exposing her backside for all to see.
- "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: A carnival game inside Harley's mind mentions "winning Daddy's love" (it's rigged).
- What Does She See in Him?: She doesn't get why Ivy would even look at a goof like Kite Man and openly tells her she could do better than him. By the end of "Trapped," she warms up to him after seeing how far he was willing to go for Ivy and really looks happy when he proposes to her.
- When She Smiles: Or, rather, when she smiles a specific type of smile, the one where she notices she has had approval. Whenever people clap at her in the Legion of Doom, her smile gets a lot prettier and more genuine.
- Woman Scorned: At first, she puts up with a LOT of physical and emotional abuse from the Joker, even forgiving him for leaving her to rot in Arkham for a year. Then, Ivy and Riddler trick the Joker into explicitly revealing that he never really cared about Harley at all, and Harley takes this about as well as any sane person would.
- Would Hurt a Child: Usually averted, but she nearly plays it straight with Robin. After the Joker sends a condescending message to Harley about her "rivalry" with Robin, Harley decides that she's going to kill Robin to make it stop. Ivy believes she is capable of doing it, but that doing so will only validate everyone's belief that Robin is her nemesis, while the rest of her crew thinks that she would just be crossing the line.
- Wrong Genre Savvy:
- She starts the series thinking she and the Joker are a passionate Outlaw Couple taking the world by storm. Every other character has a hell of a time trying to convince her otherwise until the end of the first episode.
- Also, thanks to her relationship with the Joker, she initially thinks that the reason Mister Freeze is keeping Nora frozen is that he can have her all to himself and that he's lying about her condition. This ends up causing trouble for everyone involved when Harley decides to thaw her out, only to find out that not only was the disease real, but that Nora and Freeze actually do love each other.
- Yearning for a Nemesis: The episode "Finding Mr. Right" is about Harley desperately wanting a nemesis so people will take her seriously as a villain.
Harley's potato clone
- Black-and-White Insanity: She believes herself to be ultimate justice and all criminals to be evil, including a ketamine therapist and a nun who she arrested for minor transgressions. Barbara is able to tell her apart from the real Harley because the latter doesn't believe the world is black and white.
- By-the-Book Cop: She's extremely by-the-book in her heroism and enforces the law with an iron fist.
- Clones Are People, Too: Harley's potato clone is treated as her own person up until it proves more beneficial for her to take the blame for Nightwing's death. Then she becomes an Expendable Clone.
- Fall Guy: After killing her, Harley blames her potato clone for Nightwing's murder so she doesn't have to admit that she killed Nightwing while sleepwalking.
- Knight Templar: Harley's potato clone is a lot more hardcore on capturing criminals, bringing them to justice, etc. even if it is for something as minor as putting recycling in the wrong bin.
- Lost Food Grievance: She smashes a man's face into a pole because he made her drop her ice cream.
- Uneven Hybrid: Harley's potato clone is 95% potato, 5% human. The potato portion appears to be all internal, except for the occasional branch popping out. The human portion appears to be all surface-level stuff, like skin and hair. This gives a Human Outside, Alien Inside vibe, except it is entirely based on material from Earth.
