Comic Book / Harley Quinn

"You think I'm just a doll. A doll that's pink and light. A doll you can arrange any way you like. You're wrong."

The page for the comic series spotlighting everyone's favorite Canon Immigrant and Perky Female Minion, Dr. Harleen Quinzel, also known as Harley Quinn!

The first series lasted for 38 issues, from December 2000 to January 2004, plus a special tying in with the Our Worlds at War event, with the complete run collected in graphic novels. Initially it was written by Karl Kesel, with A. J. Lieberman taking over for the last year or so.

The series begins when, after a failed scheme, The Joker gets so pissed at Harley that he kicks her out of his gang — the rest of the series deals with Harley trying to make it on her own. Initially she tries freelance henching, but that doesn't exactly work out, so she starts her own gang instead. With... mixed results.

A running theme in the first part is Harley's childlike inability to take responsibility for her own actions, or even acknowledge/realize any consequences besides her having fun, which reaches Tear Jerker levels at times, though the comic itself is more than a little madcap. Also heavily involved is Harley's love of Love, and her being willing to do pretty much anything in the name of it.

The last set of storylines, following the change in writers, happen after a time skip and feature a noticeable Genre Shift to a more noirish style, downplaying Harley's cheery quirks and madcap adventures and instead playing her more like a jaded expy of Catwoman. This did not last.

In true tradition of the Batman side-comics, the Caped Crusader himself does not appear very often, nor, interestingly enough, does the Joker beyond the first issue or so.

Note that the title character predates this series. She had debuted in Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Her first comic book appearance was in The Batman Adventures #12 (September, 1993). Her introduction to the mainstream DC universe took place in the one-shot Batman: Harley Quinn (October, 1999).

The first series has largely inspired the 2019 animated streaming show Harley Quinn (2019).

Harley got a second series in the New 52, which ran for 31 issues from November 2013 to July 2016, and had a number of specials. It was written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner of Power Girl fame, and follows Harley and her antics on Coney Island after she inherits an apartment complex there.

In June 2015, it got a Spin-Off miniseries by Palmiotti, Conner, and Justin Gray, Harley Quinn/Power Girl, recounting a lost adventure set during the duo's partnership in the main series, featuring Vartox of Power Girl fame. In December of the same year, DC launched a second spin-off miniseries called Harley's Little Black Book, by Palmiotti and Conner, a The Brave and the Bold-style Team-Up Series that features Harley partnering with a different DC hero or villain in each issue. In April 2016, it got a third spin-off, the miniseries Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys, written by Palmiotti and Frank Tieri.

The series was relaunched in August 2016 as part of DC Rebirth, now twice-monthly and with a new #1 issue, but as a seamless continuation of the previous series with hardly any changes, keeping Palmiotti and Conner as writers, and Harley on Coney Island with the same supporting cast. Connor and Palmiotti left after issue #35; from issue #36, Frank Tieri took over as writer for seven issues and Christopher Sabela for two, before Sam Humphries became the new ongoing writer with #45. The series went monthly again from issue #57. The series ended with #75.

2018 saw a further spin-off miniseries by Tieri, Old Lady Harley, returning to the parody post-apocalyptic Bad Future depicted in #42. 2019 saw the spin-off miniseries Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, and quite a lot of non-continuity Harley miniseries and graphic novels for DC's specialist imprints: Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass for DC Ink, which features Harley and a... very unusual version of the Joker as contemporary left-wing political activists; Harleen for DC Black Label, a new retelling of Harley's origin by Stjepan Seijic; and Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, a DC Black Label miniseries set in a non-superhero universe with the Joker as a mundane serial killer and Harleen as a police profiler on his trail. 2020 saw another mini-series, Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey, written by Conner and Palmiotti with, for the first time, interior art by Conner; this was made to tie in with the film Birds of Prey (2020), featuring Harley with the Birds team as depicted in the film of Renee Montoya, Black Canary, Huntress, and Cassandra Cain. At the same time, the digital-first series Harley Quinn: Black, White and Red was released, featuring Harley comics set in various continuities by various authors, printed exclusively in the eponymous colors.

In 2021, the series was relaunched from #1 again, with Stephanie Phillips as writer and Riley Rossmo as main artist. In contrast to the previous couple of runs, this one was much more strongly tied in to the continuity of Batman-related titles, continuing on from Harley's return to Gotham during the "Joker War" event, and depicting her attempts to make up for her past actions and help redeem other people who fell under the Joker's influence. Rossmo left after #17, replaced by a variety of different creators, and in 2023 the series was relaunched under the "Dawn of DC" banner from #28 on, with Tini Howard as writer and Sweeney Boo as artist.

Note: This isn't a character page. This page is about Harley's various solo series and the tropes therein. For character tropes related to all appearances by The DCU incarnation of the character, see here, or for her DC Extended Universe live-action version here. Or you can just ask her yourself. The original version can be found here.

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These series provides examples of:

Vol 1

Old School.

• Adaptational Intelligence: In the original Mad Love comic, written by her creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, it's implied that Harley had slept her way through college to earn her psychology degree, otherwise she'd fail. Many other incarnations, including her main DCU one, legitimately earned their degrees.
• Aesop Amnesia: A major lesson Harley learns in the series is that she doesn't need the Joker in her life. Unfortunately, at some point between the end of the series and her next appearance in the comics, Joker must have gotten to her again, which is sadly very in character.
• Alleged Lookalikes: In-Universe. The third issue has a man who says he can never hold down a job because he looks just like...The Joker (Harley had guessed Al Gore with a bad haircut). He doesn't and is clearly delusional, eventually leading to his own death out of sheer idiocy.
• Anti-Villain / Anti-Hero: Harley, who fluctuates between a good-hearted villain and devious but heroic very rapidly. Sometimes in the same issue.
• Art Shift: Several times in the first part of the series the art shifts to a sort of "Harleyvision," which shows the world how she sees it: rendered in a more cartoony version of the DCAU style, where nobody dies and everything plays out like a Looney Tunes cartoon. This becomes harrowing at times, such as when Harley blows up a traitorous minion and we see, in Harleyvision, a Looney Tunes-esque scene where the woman's face is covered in soot, her hair is frizzy, and her eyes are swirled like a stunned cartoon character after an explosion... and then later someone runs through the same hallway and we instead see the truth: the minion's mangled corpse.
• Bad Boss: Harley runs into this twice - with Joker and Two-Face. She herself kills several of her minions, but only after they betray her, with one notable exception.
• Barred from the Afterlife: In one issue Harley was killed and sent to Hell, but was banished from the place due to her focus on joy and love. Clearly, in a place where you're supposed to "Abandon All Hope", the staff doesn't like having someone like that around.
• Berserk Button: The entire Bat-family attack Harley when she dresses as Batgirl. Dick, especially, is very pissed.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Poison Ivy's relationship with Harley has primarily been this way since they met in Batman: The Animated Series (though DC kept it as subtexty as possible for years). Harley is head-over-heels for her boyfriend, The Joker. The Joker is extremely physically and emotionally abusive but Harley always goes back to him in the end. Ivy on the other hand has feelings for Harley and the two have a much more stable relationship, but Depending on the Writer Harley is either oblivious, knows of Ivy's feeling but ignores her, or has flings with Ivy when she and the Joker are separate. Starting with the New 52 reboot, DC revamped Ivy and Harley's relationship to be more obviously romantic and requited. They're either Friends with Benefits or a non-monogamous couple.
• Bound and Gagged: Happens several times to Thorn after she is defeated by Harley and Ivy.

• Bunny Ears Psychologist: Harley, in spades. She barely ever acts like anything but an unrestrained loon, but occasionally she makes it known that she's still a university-educated psychologist. Later in the series, after she mostly loses the "bunny ears," she gets a day job in the field and takes a few patients (one or two of which want to kill her).
• Canon Immigrant: Harley, from Batman: The Animated Series: while she appeared in the comics before this, this was where she came into her own and got a lot of character establishment.
• Children Are Innocent: With Harley as a (wo)manchild rather than a regular one. She is, however, widely regarded by others as being extremely innocent, of the "not aware of doing evil" variety, just, in her mind, having fun - this does, however, involve a laundry list of psychologically stunted systems of denial. She sees the world like a game of make-believe, and is oblivious to the fact that she is hurting people and doesn't truly acknowledge the danger of what she does or other people's danger to her - though she in more lucid moments claims this is less innocence and more a rejecting of the world in favor of her own reality.
• Clark Kenting: Harley parodies (and lampshades) this trope while in Metropolis, disguising herself as a mild-mannered, if kooky, love columnist for the Daily Planet — without ever realizing one of her coworkers is Superman.
• Downer Ending: In the final story arc Harley has to protect a girl who has some sort of code written on her retina. While Harley claims the girl means nothing to her, it's clear she does care about her as she saves her multiple times. Despite this, she ends up selling out the girl and letting her go blind despite promising not to. This makes her feel so guilty she has a total mental breakdown, and voluntarily returns to Arkham. The saddest part is she really did care about the girl (otherwise she wouldn't feel so guilty), and was thinking about saving her at first, but still chose to betray her

• Faux Action Girl: Gritty vigilante Thorn tries is easily defeated and tied up by Harley and Ivy in each of her appearances, barring the first.
• For Science!: At one point Harley and Ivy capture a meddling Thorn in Metropolis, and while having her at their mercy discover her split civilian "Rose" personality. Harley is intrigued and gets the idea to put her through even more emotional trauma to see how many times they can get her personality to split. Ivy plays along, but she on the other hand just wants to torture her for the hell of it.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Usually an imaginary Harley comments to viewers on events in the comic.
• Freudian Excuse / Start of Darkness: One story gives us a flashback to before Harley met the Joker, where a psychological experiment gone terribly wrong with her old fiancé, resulting in his suicide, drives her to a philosophy of meaninglessness and emotional fragility long before she ever sets foot in Arkham, and it's this, if anything, that starts her on her road to villainy, with the Joker just guiding her to her destination.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Harley kidnaps a girl whose eyes are needed for some sort of convoluted and very lucrative underhanded venture - but while she is protecting her from others who want the money (and don't care whether the girl lives), the two sort of bond. So then, it comes down to Harley whether to give up the girl and make a mint or save her. Long story short, the girl ends up blind and Harley ends up richer, completely depressed and unable to look at herself in the mirror.
• Genius Ditz: The series itself goes back and forth as to whether Harley truly is a brilliant psychologist or whether she cheated her way through school and was not fit to do it in the first place - though it eventually settles on the former.

• Girlish Pigtails: When out of costume she usually has her hair in pigtails. Fitting considering how childish she is.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: Several times in the beginning of the series, where a female villain eventually teams up with other female villains and they fight female heroes, particularly the "sleepover" episode.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Often. Her shoulder devil alternately appears as either the Joker or herself in costume, while her shoulder angel is consistently Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Fairly often, however, they shift roles from "good/evil" to "reason/insanity" or "common sense/impulsiveness."
• Happy Harlequin Hat: Completing her harlequin inspired outfit is her iconic red and black hat, though it has two flaps and no bells.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: To the Joker, of course. The series as a whole is one long attempt by her to get over this, especially the first half, with varied success.
• Innocence Lost: A major plot point in the second half, involving Harley herself, who realizes what kind of person she truly is and fully, if sadly, embraces it, and a girl she kidnapped, who loses her sight thanks to Harley's greed. Inverted with the girl in question, who regains a bit of her innocence after being free of everyone pursuing her (now that she doesn't have what they want anymore) to the point that she pities people like Harley.
• Jet Pack: Harley steals a jet pack at some point. She runs into trouble when it explodes.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted: In the final story arc, Harley has to watch over a little girl who has some kind of code written on her retina she has to scan her to get the code, but afterwards the girl will be blind for life if she doesn't get help. Despite promising to save her Harley instead fucks her over and lets her go blind in order to get a reward. In the final issue, she has an epic Heroic BSoD/ Villainous Breakdown and feels so guilty she turns herself in to Arkham, meaning even if the other characters let her get away with betraying the girl, her conscience certainly didn't.
• Killed Off for Real: Harley, at one point, gets caught up in a massive explosion. The next few issues take place in Hell. She gets better. Also, Lewis, though Harley never registers that she killed him.
• Lampshade Hanging: Harley mentions in issue 13 how it's always night time in Gotham City.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Harley's backstory, of course.
• Love Redeems / Love Freak : Of a sort. Harley, being a lover of love, decides to help it grow wherever she can - being in love is the easiest way to get her to spare you. Early on she fights Two-Face to save a hostage he was taking as his own because she felt the story was romantic, and later on she plays matchmaker to a pair of bounty hunters trying to bring her in.
• Male Gaze: If an issue is drawn by Terry Dodson, you can be sure that there is a butt shot of Harley or Poison Ivy (also Catwoman once).
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Happens twice - to Lewis in the beginning, who was trying to guide the driftingly insane Harley to something better than the world he was stuck in. Harley herself killed him, shooting him through the chest to stop him from killing hostages, though she does not acknowledge that she had fatally injured him. Later happens to the old ex-con Harley befriends, who was implied to have done a lot to help her into the relative sanity she had by the end of the series.
• Ms. Fanservice: She often wears a tight jester suit and switches it out for what can best be described as a bikini designed to resemble her former appearance.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: For a time, Jimmy Olsen of all people dates Harley without realizing who she is. This does not end well for Jimmy when it doesn't work out.
• Psycho for Hire: Several, including a traitorous henchman Harley for some reason continues to hire.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Harley herself, who acts and thinks like a child at play; this is particularly noticeable with the addition of the aforementioned Harleyvision - the world as she sees it where, again, nobody dies and everything is like a game or cartoon. Harley herself does not register the true consequences of her actions, and doesn't even realize she's been killing people until she meets with up her victims in Hell (long story), and even then it takes her a while to realize they're dead - she thinks she's still alive because she doesn't register having killed anyone.

• Shipper on Deck: During the first run, Harley notices the Unresolved Sexual Tension between two detectives and decides to encourage them to get together. She ends up killing Lewis, the most developed and sympathetic of her henchmen, to keep him from being a Moment Killer — although she thinks it's just a flesh wound thanks to Harleyvision.
• Shout-Out:
  • In one of the early Girls' Night Out issues, the obscure duo of Bad Girls, the Body Doubles, appear cosplaying as Adam Warren's version of the Dirty Pair. The vigilante Thorn also shows up in a disguise that looks like Dark Horse Comics' "Ghost" character.
  • Volume one of the collected editions is called "Preludes and Knock Knock Jokes", a riff on the first volume of The Sandman (1989), "Preludes and Nocturnes".
  • The issues with the Carnival of Killers includes expies of Clownface and Panda from Body Bags.
• Slumber Party: Harley held a supervillainess sleepover in one issue.
• Split Personality: Two-Face appears at one point, so that's a given. However, the storyline where he appears also involves a businessman allegedly having an affair with a woman who turns out to be his wife's split personality. Also, Rose and Thorn appear when Harley goes to Metropolis.
• The Starscream: When Harley starts her own gang she gets several, including a remnant of one of Joker's gangs who is disappointed she isn't more violently destructive.
• Start of Darkness: It's Harley's comic, so of course we'll see it. But the kicker is that it's not how you might remember it.
• Straw Nihilist: Gotham breeds this - in this series there's Joker, Lewis (to an extent: this is one of the reasons why he did not feel sad about finally being killed), and Harley to an extent.
• Toasted Buns: Harley references this while jetpacking away from Superman — which makes sense, as the jetpack in question is small enough to fit in her lower back and at one point is directly facing into her behind.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Her constant, unyielding focus on love and joy caused her to get banished from hell.
• The Unreveal: Weaponized in fact. Harley's Start of Darkness involved her professor's experiment killing her boyfriend, but it's never shown whether Harley shot him in assisted suicide or he just shot himself. Harley finds out the professor has been after the answer for all these years and refuses to tell him.
• Villain Protagonist: While she has some heroic moments the series is largely about her committing a lot of crime and trying to establish her own criminal empire without the guidance of the Joker.

Vol 2

New 52 School.

• Accidental Innuendo: Bernie, Harley's taxidermy beaver, is subject to this in-universe, such as when Harley asks Ivy if she wants to "meet [her] beaver", which Ivy misinterprets sexually before seeing what Bernie is.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Poison Ivy spends most of Issue 7 being exasperated at Harley, but she lets out a brief laugh after Harley says the assassin ripped in half by a fence "went Splitsville".
• All Just a Dream: Most of issue 0 takes place in a dream Harley is having after wishing for her own comic. It's a very crazy dream where she talks with the comic's writers and holds auditions for artists to draw her comic.
• All There in the Manual: The fifth graphic novel collection, The Joker's Last Laugh, has a bonus story, "Be Careful What You Wish For", which introduces ex-genie Jimm Salabim.
• Alter Kocker: Sy Borgman is an old man who speaks Yiddish almost every time he opens his mouth.
• Alternate Self:
  • The Power Girl who shows up in the series is the Kara from Conner's pre-Flashpoint series, not the New 52 Kara, saying in Harley Quinn/Power Girl that she's the sole survivor of her timeline and had that whole Earth-2 thing happen. How she ended up crashlanding near Harley is left mysterious.
  • Harley meets her own alternate self when she visits the Bombshells world in Little Black Book #4, which has... unexpected consequences.
• Anti-Hero: Harley doesn't try to cause trouble, it just happens, and she enforces justice in her own way, like freeing a neglected dog and punishing the owner, and rescuing an old woman who was robbed and giving her some money despite her own day going wrong in every way possible.
• Armed with Canon: The controversy over Harley's New 52 costume redesign (which included some writers who preferred the old costume openly mocking the new one in their own comics) is alluded to in #21, where Harley has a run-in with a character impersonator on Hollywood Boulevard who is wearing her old costume. Harley says that she only wears that costume on "special occasions", and when the impersonator accuses her of making a complete mess of being Harley, Harley pistol-whips her.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Almost literally. The criminals on the van in Issue 3 are an arsonist, eight murderers, two mass murderers, two serial killers, and a pervert.
• Art Shift: In issue 0, Harley realizes that she needs an artist to draw her comic. The writers give her seventeen to choose from. Artists include Amanda Conner, Jim Lee, Bruce Timm, and Art Baltazar. In the end, she settles on Chad Hardin as her artist.
  Harley: Seventeen artists to tell me how good I look? Eat your heart out, Pud'n!
• Ascended Fangirl: The first issue of Harley's Little Black Book reveals that Harley is a huge Wonder Woman fan, and in the book Harley gets to team up with her.
• Asshole Victim: 99 percent of the people Harley kills are other crooks and hitmen trying to kill her. animal abusers, and other horrible people. The only real exception is in #20 where the airport loses her luggage and the clerk is uncooperative, so Harley kills her and stuffs her in a suitcase.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Happens to Harley a lot. In one issue she plans to break into Arkham to rescue Ivy, but is distracted by the pizza in the restaurant she parachutes into.
• Author Avatar: In issue 0, the comic's writers, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, appear to Harley as disembodied voices. Jimmy's speech balloon is blue and Amanda's is green. They appear in person in Darwyn Cooke's segment.
• Bachelor Auction: In the Harley Quinn Valentine's Day Special #1, Bruce Wayne is New York for a charity bachelor auction, and Harley decides she has to be the one to win a dream date with The DCU's most eligible bachelor.
• Badass Biker: Harley rides around in a Harley Davidson and tends to wear a red and black biker jacket.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Issue 2 opens up with Harley back together with the Joker, but it turns out that it was just a wax statue of him.
  • Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (2019) #6 reveals that, back in #2, Harley unknowingly carried off and drove away with an exact double of Ivy that the real Ivy accidentally created in #1, and Ivy was the one hunting down the two of them all along.
  • In number 16, theres a scene where Harley and Ivy are at a movie and Harley is loudly talking during it. The two people sitting behind her are understandably annoyed and tell her to shut up. She turns around, looks like she is about to punch them.. only to smile and politely say she's sorry and didn't realize her voice was so loud. Even better, Ivy points out after that Harley seems to be learning to control her temper better.
• Beautiful Dreamer: In issue 2, Ivy wakes up in bed with a sleeping Harley surrounded by several cuddly cats and dogs. She says "Aww…my cute little psycho" and kisses Harley's cheek before wandering off.
• Benevolent Boss: This version of Harley is actually pretty nice to her followers (some of whom are more than just followers.)
• Big-Breast Pride: In #22, Harley is briefing the Gang of Harleys when she notices that Harley Queen is topless. She asks Queen why, and Queen replies:
  "Number one, just look at these! Number two... Well, just look at 'em!"
• Big Damn Heroes: Big Tony shoots a hitwoman that was sneaking up on Harley while she was relaxing.
• Big Eater: This Harley sure can stuff her face.
  Nate (the hot dog stand guy): When you eat that much, where does it all go?
  Harley: Ha! You'll figure it out when I walk away from here.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • Dan DiDio shows up in the Comic-Con special, where among other things he mentions that the next New 52 September event will have 4-D covers - basically 3-D, with the 4th D standing for DiDio, as he'll be in the background of every issue - that involved mining one of the most remote places on Earth and melting part of the South Pole in the process, and that DC will be launching a line with no editors to overlook the content which they don't expect to sell at all, so they're giving them a low print run.
  • Harley's comic faces rejection at Comic-Con because DC isn't looking for anything new or original.
  • In #8, Harley launches a barrage of dog poop with the Scatapult at the DC office, where a "Gnu 52" reboot (where a villain forces Zatanna to turn everyone into antelope and wildebeest) is being pitched by DiDio. You can also see Jim Lee and Geoff Johns there.
  • The name of the boss demon in Harley's Little Black Book #3 is Nad Oidid.
• Black Comedy: A good deal of the book is focused on this, but the crowning example has to be when Ivy and Harley are betting on which side of a fence a corpse stuck on it will fall on. They also use scientific analysis to justify their predictions. As it turns out, the body splits in half and falls on both sides, making both correct.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Harley has a twisted sense of right and wrong. When she sees a dog getting neglected by his owner, she frees the dog and drags the owner by her motorcycle.
• Blood Knight: She really likes fighting, in particular melee combat with blunt instruments. Even when "off-duty" she loves full contact sports like boxing and roller derby.
• Bondage Is Bad: Harley seems to be a fan of this, both as the dominant and the submissive. To give an obvious example, one issue starts with her waking up in her rather messy apartment with last night's date behind her, duct-taped to the wall; two pages later, she sees a patient dressed in a gimp outfit (her treatment consists of "integral psychotherapy" through "introspection and dissection", a fancy way of saying she hogties him). Unfortunately, this leads to a horrific nightmare where she's in bed with Mason, who turns into "Mistuh Jay" mid-embrace.
• Bound and Gagged: The comic has had a heavy emphasis on ballgags, with Harley using one to gag a victim at least once per issue as they have progressed. Harley herself was bound and gagged in the first issue of Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys.
• The Boxing Episode: In Harley's Little Black Book #5 Harley and Superman square off in the boxing ring in a story that's an homage/parody of the famous Superman vs Muhammad Ali comic.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Issue 0 has Harley and the writers breaking the fourth wall so much, it'll give Deadpool a run for his money. The end of the issue has them swear they'll stop breaking the fourth wall by issue 1. (That doesn't stop them jumping up and down on the pieces of the wall later on, though.)
  • At the end of Harley's Little Black Book 2, Harley kisses Hal Jordan and squeezes his butt. Why? She's seen this on the cover.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Issue 0, Harley likes artist Stephane Roux's art and says she'll have him draw half of issue 2. He does.
  • At the end of Issue 3, Harley throws an aphrodisiac plant Ivy gave her out of her window, after she suffered some Love Potion shenanigans because of it, and it lands in the sea lion pool at the zoo. Many issues later, there's a newspaper headline about a sea lion baby boom.
  • In the annual, Harley fantasizes about being Godzilla when hurtling across New York city via catapult. The mass hallucination she induces later includes a scene of Harley as Godzilla.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While Harley may be crazy and has an unusual appearance, she's still a licensed psychiatrist, and manages to secure a job as a therapist. Subverted in that her appearance is never noticed by others, and that she dresses up as Harleen for her job.
• The Bus Came Back: Captain Horatio Strong, an obscure character from the '70s Superman comics.
• Calacas: Harley Sinn has facial tattoos in a calaca design.
• Call-Back: In the Comic-Con special, Harley's got a score to settle with Amanda and Jimmy from back in issue #0. (Yes, that was a dream. Harley's relationship with the fourth wall appears to be just as quirky as everything else in her life.)
• The Cameo:
  • Mr. Mind shows up in the first page of Harley Quinn/Power Girl #1... only to be puked on by a motion-sick Harley.
  • Harley Quinn/Power Girl #3 has Grant Morrison pop up in the middle of a Mushroom Samba. Which is fitting, considering.
  • Bizarro and Jimmy Olsen show up for two pages in the Road Trip Special, tying into the Bizarro miniseries.
  • Little Black Book #2 has a guest appearance from Geoff Johns as a Green Lantern fanboy bidding against Harley for a real GL ring.
  • Issue 30 features cameos from numerous DC characters in Harley's dream, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Suicide Squad, several Bat-villains, and several of Conner's previous characters (Power Girl, Starfire, Terra).
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Captain Horatio Strong is the DC version of Popeye.
  • Harley faces a talkative and crazy mercenary in a full red and black suit called Red Tool. Sounds familiar, eh?
  • The first three issues of Harley's Little Black Book include a British superhero called Pub Crawler, who uses his alcohol-induced bodily secretions to fight crime. As such he's a combination of a Spider-Man parody with the Viz Drunken Master Deconstructive Parody superhero Brown Bottle.
• Captain Ethnic: Intentionally invoked with the Gang of Harleys. The Jewish member is dubbed Hanuquin, while the Indian member is dubbed Bolly Quinn. Averted with Harley Queens. She's Chinese-American, but Harley chose to give her a name that reflects the fact that she lives in Queens, rather than anything pertaining to her ethnicity.
• Carnival of Killers: The $2 million bounty placed on Harley's head brings a veritable army of hired killers out the woodwork looking to claim it.
• The Casanova: Big Tony claims to have a lot of devotees.
• Catchphrase: Harley very frequently says "Holee [awful rhyme fitting the situation]" (emphasis on the ho), such as "Holee Tracheotomolee!" when she throws a knife into a would-be assassin's throat.
  • Harley also says several variations on "I think I died and went to Heaven!"
  • Also "Whoopsie daisies!" whenever she screws up.
• Clark Kenting: Harley tries to give an amnesiac Power Girl a secret identity by way of this. Remedied by adding a ponytail.
  Power Girl: (about the glasses-only disguise) You must think I'm an idiot. Only a moron couldn't tell the difference.
• Cleavage Window: Harley puts a diamond-shaped one on her superhero costume, and another one above her backside.
• Cliffhanger: Subverted in issue 4. Harley and Sy get caught in an explosion. The ending narration starts off with the typical "Will they survive?" thing before admitting that of course they'll live.
• Comic-Book Time: Harley was a huge fan of Wonder Woman when she was a little girl...which makes no sense given the timeline. Given this series, the discrepancy was almost certainly intentional.
• Companion Cube: Bernie, Harley's stuffed beaver, whom she also imagines speaking. He's pretty snarky.
• Continuity Snarl: The series doesn't even attempt to explain how Harley's life and adventures in Brooklyn fit in with her situation in the simultaneously-published Suicide Squad, although a couple of jokes lampshade the issue.
• Cool Old Guy: Sy Borgman, retired bioaugmented secret agent who can still inflict damage from his invalid scooter and ends up as a sort of surrogate uncle to Harley.
• Cut and Paste Comic: The same panel is reused three times when Harley and Ivy are looking out the window and making the aforementioned bet. In Issue 4, the art is mostly reused for both times Harley drives away (after knocking down the opposing roller derby team, and after releasing the Rubenstein family.)
• Cute and Psycho: Harley, as usual. Acknowledged when Poison Ivy calls a sleeping Harley "my cute little psycho".
• Cuteness Overload: Harley when faced with an alien hydra in Harley Quinn/Power Girl #1.
• Daydream Surprise: In #14, Harley's been having a really crappy day, but things are finally starting to look up for her... then she gets a nasty Joker-flavored surprise and wakes up.
• Deadpan Snarker: Bernie, pretty much every time his voice issues out into Harley's mind.
  • Ivy, although her snark isn't nearly as venomous as before the New 52:
  Harley: Is everyone as excited as I am?
  Ivy: No. It's not possible.
  • Santa here, after removing a humbug from Harley's ear:
  Harley: That... That itty-bitty thing is what drove me insane?
  Santa: Something tells me you had a pretty good head start.
• Defecting for Love: Zena changes sides for Sy.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • While she's drawn by several artists in issue 0, the colors of her clothes and hair alternate between "red and black" or "red and blue". Her permanent artist goes for the red and black colors.
  • Whenever Amanda Conner herself draws Harley on covers and occasionally inside, she seems to be either wearing pink blusher on her cheekbones, or to have some natural color there. The other artists on the series all draw her with her normal dead white skin.
• Destructo-Nookie: Harley, Ivy and Catwoman spend a wild night together at a hotel. The next morning, the bed is destroyed and there are claw marks on the wall.
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: The first issue of Harley's Little Black Book includes a British costumed villain called the Barmy Bugger, which is yet another example of how US writers aren't aware of how offensive and insulting the word "bugger" actually is in British English — it's not something that even a villain would voluntarily call themselves^note  In U.S. lingo, calling yourself "Barmy Bugger" would be like someone calling themselves "Crazy Butt-Fucker".
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • Averted in issue #0. The comics Harley is reading are all from DC Comics' New 52. Near the end, she picks up a comic, not realizing that it's her own. If you look closely, you can see that it foreshadows how issue #0 will end.
  • Harley's Dream Sequence in issue #30 has her going to see The Kill Yourself Crew.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Harley tends to go overboard when it comes to people she thinks are bad. Even merely rude people are demmed worthy of murder.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: Miz Diangelis takes a wooden spoon to her teenage daughters for lying about their age to join Harley's gang. Subverted a few issues later when Harley advises a client against beating her rebellious daughter, reasoning that "a good old-fashioned beating" would only alienate her further in her current state.
• Double Entendre: A good helping of it, mainly coming from Harley. Complete with That's What She Said.
• Drop the Hammer: Harley's preferred weapon is a huge mallet.
• Easter Egg: In Issue 7, a rather creepy grinning face can be seen under Harley's bed.
• Egg Folk: Eggsy is for unknown reasons a sentient egg in power armor.
• Embarrassing Tattoo: After being abducted and knocked out by Red Tool, Harley wakes up with a red hammer and Red Tool's phone number tattooed on her ass. Harley, needless to say, is pissed at this turn of events.
• Episode Zero: The Beginning: The series starts off on issue #0 with Harley choosing which artist to draw her comic. It also has her getting some property in Coney Island where the series will take place.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In the first issue, Harley drags a man behind her motorcycle after she catches him hurting a dog.
  • In issue #4, Harley kidnaps a family that she believes is neglecting their grandmother. Just as she's about to drown the Bound and Gagged hostages, she learns that the whole thing was a huge misunderstanding, and releases them.
• Even the Girls Want Her: After watching Harley (non-fatally) mow down a group of rival derby girls with her car, one of her teammates remarks "Wow. That was kinda hot."
• Even the Guys Want Him: Both the male and female news reporters confess a desire to go on the auctioned date with Bruce Wayne.
• Fanservice: Harley dresses quite revealingly and gets a lot of male gaze, as do several of the other regular female characters, and there's a lot of mildly erotic sex humour. Taken to an extreme in the "Gotham City Sirens reunion" Road Trip special, which was criticized by some reviewers for being very little but fanservice.
• Fight Club: After being rapidly banned from her initial roller derby league for being too violent, Harley gets recruited to a "skate club" that is an illegal no-rules fight club on roller skates. And we mean "no rules" — Harley has even been known to accidentally kill or maim members of the audience with no consequences.
• Flash Forward: The Futures End tie-in, as part of the theme for the New 52 comics that month, flashes five years ahead to feature Harley meeting up with the Joker on a desert island (and dropping hints as to what's about to happen in the present day).
• Friend to All Living Things: Harley goes so far as to volunteer her time at a pet shelter on Christmas, then breaks into a home to make sure the owners aren't mistreating an adopted dog.
• Funetik Aksent: Harley's Brooklyn accent (although it's rather inconsistent), and several of the Russian bad guys fought by Harley and Sy.
• Gang of Hats: Harley creates a gang who all dress like her in order to help her fight crime and organise her life.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: The burlesque play in issue 9 where Queenie kisses Harley gets a very positive reaction from the crowd.
• Handicapped Badass: This series introduces several new ones to the DCU. Sy Borgman and the blind Coach of the Gang of Harleys are prime examples of this trope.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Red Tool initially behaves in a very creepy Stalker with a Crush way towards Harley, but she forgives him, accepts him into her circle of friends, and is implied to occasionally sleep with him.
  • Harley Sinn is the villain of the Gang of Harleys miniseries, but after getting released from Arkham becomes part of her crew.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": Harley does this a lot.
  Harley (after Power Girl's soda cup is shot): Oh, no! Don't worry, we can get another cup. Heh, I said cup.
  Harley (after Manos calls for his pipe organ): HA! He said Cosmic Organ.
• Hired Guns: Harley has to deal with all sorts of mercenaries and bounty hunters since she has a bounty on her head worth over $2 million.
• Humongous Mecha: In issue 29 Harley fights a man with both using giant transforming mecha.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: In Harley's fight with Captain Strong, he gives a Hurricane of Euphemisms for defecation, she responds with one for vomiting.
• Hypocritical Humor: Harley points out the obvious case of Steven Ulysses Perhero surrounding Sy Borgman's name. Never mind that her own name is Harleen Quinzel.
• I Call It "Vera": In #5, we learn that Harley calls that huge hammer "Beatrice." "She never runs out of bullets."
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Harley Sinn has her secret hideout on the Island of Horrible Death. Presumably she named the place herself.
• I See Dead People: According to Harley's Little Black Book #3, Harley's been able to see ghosts at least since medical school. Zatanna has no idea why.
• I Take Offence to That Last One: In Harley's Little Black Book #5, an alien conqueror tells Big Tony "Quiet, whimpering maggot!". Tony replies:
  "What? I don't whimper!"
• Imagine the Audience Naked: In #0, Harley finds herself dreaming that she is performing in front of an audience of comic book fans. She forgets her lines and tries to remember this piece of advice, but gets confused as to whether she is supposed to imagine the audience naked or herself naked. Ultimately she imagines herself naked and starts belting out her lines, only the dream changes so she is now in church.
• Improbable Weapon User: At one point, Harley uses some linked model trains as a whip.
• Improvised Weapon: In issue 3, to stop the love-crazy convicts that are after her, Harley breaks into a tool store to gear up. Her arsenal includes a weed whacker, an axe, a nail gun, and a propane tank.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Summer absolutely loves how brutal Harley can get in the roller derby - and out too, as seen by her reaction when Harley takes her car and runs over a rival team who had just defeated the Bruisers in her absence in #4. The others are pretty horrified, but Summer thinks it was "kinda hot".
• Ironic Nickname: One of Harley's tenants is a short guy named Big Tony.
• Irony: Before her chemical bath (and, technically, before the New 52), Harleen had to wear makeup to become Harley. Now, Harley has to wear makeup to become Harleen for a job.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight, Harley has a surprisingly good heart. In addition to being an extreme Animal Lover, she seems to be given to whims of kindness in general, even (occasionally) to superheroes and other people who are techincally her enemies. This version of her also has a civilian identity where she is still a psychiatrist, and she really does seem to care about her patients.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Issue 30, the last before the DC Rebirth relaunch, is something of a commentary on Rebirth, with Harley refusing to let things be changed and standing up for the past, and Ivy finding a solution that combines the best of both worlds, in line with Rebirth's intended ethos.
• Lighter and Softer: Than most of the other books in the New 52, which tended to be very serious, despite this one having a lot of death and even some gore.
• Limited Wardrobe: Averted, as she's shown to have different outfits, most of them in the red and black jester-themed pattern she's known for. She wonders how Superman can wear the same thing all the time.
• Loony Fan/Stalker with a Crush: Harley discovers she has one in issue 9. She sympathises, thanks to her own obsessive issues... and manages to persuade him to get some therapy. But later the Joker manages to get in touch with the guy and things go way down south...
• Loves My Alter Ego: According to the Valentine's Day Special, Harley prefers Bruce Wayne over Batman, particularly when it comes to kissing (Bruce doesn't reciprocate).
• Male Gaze: There are many panels in the series focused squarely on Harley's butt.
  • Issue 13 has one panel which is just the backside of her Power Girl outfit showing off the outfit's butt window.
  • Issue 26 has a panel where her butt is dead center as a leering guy with a metal detector makes an unwelcome comment about it as she walks by.
  • Issue 29 takes it up a level, with a panel focused on the butt of a Transforming Mecha in Harley's image.
• Match Cut: A scene transitions from an imminent decapitation to a meatball falling on a diner floor.
• Meaningful Name: Sy Borgman, also known as Syborg, got cybernetic limbs at some point in his life.
• Miranda Rights: Spoofed in #9 because Harley won't shut up about its terms (and even throws in a reference to Daredevil at the lawyer part).
• Ms. Fanservice: Even more than the pre-New 52 version. She often is half-naked and object of Male Gaze.
  • In Little Black Book #6 she actually has a whole fight scene battling a monster fully naked. The naughty bits are censored of course, but just barely.
• Mugged for Disguise: The first issue of Harley's Little Black Book has Harley knocking Wonder Woman unconscious so she can steal her costume.
• Mugging the Monster: Parodied in the Gang of Harleys miniseries, when one of Harley Sinn's Psychos for Hire minions stumbles across a group of homeless men in an alley and pretends to think that they're trying to mug him, so that he can kill them for fun. Harlem Harley intervenes before he can harm anyone.
• Mushroom Samba:
  • Many issues of the comic involve Harley getting dosed with something and having weird hallucinations. Comes from being... close friends... with Poison Ivy.
  • A good portion of Issue 3 of Harley Quinn/Power Girl ends up turning into some weird version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Issue 0 has a few.
    • Harley notices that Jim Lee's page is a remake of a scene from Batman: Hush, except that this time, she beats Batman.
    • Harley references her time in the Suicide Squad, which is misinterpreted by the artist.
    • Bruce Timm's page not only has Harley in her Batman: The Animated Series costume, but she also does a theater version of her "Rev up your Harley" scene where she forgets her lines.
    • Harley's original costume also appears in a portrait of her in Art Baltazar's page.
    • When Amanda Conner appears in person, she's wearing a Cleavage Window dress in reference to her previous comic, Power Girl. She can also kick butt like Power Girl, as she demonstrates on Harley.
  • Issue 1 has Harley's pre-New 52 headwear sitting on top of her luggage.
  • Her Loony Fan's collection in issue 9 features a number of pictures and memorabilia of Harley in her original costume - including her outfit from her time as a psychologist.
  • Harley encountering the Clock King, as both were products of Batman: The Animated Series.
  • The Road Trip Special is a Gotham City Sirens reunion, as Harley, Ivy and Selina team up for the titular road trip. Also, one of Harley's kid photos features her dressed as Golden Age Wonder Woman.
  • In issue 26, Harley gets a makeover bringing her closer to her Suicide Squad (2016) film look.
  • In "Be Careful What You Wish For", Harley wishes to be Wonder Woman. Jimm Salabim asks which Wonder Woman she wants to be - the classic warrior on horseback, the TV one, the '70s comics one with the white slacks, the Perez-era one, the New 52 one... Harley asks how he knows this, given he's been stuck in a bottle for the last few centuries. Jimm says it's genie powers whose workings he doesn't understand.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In #25, when the Joker tries to convince Harley to let him out when she comes to rescue Mason, Harley goes right into his cell and beats him up and follows it up by telling him she's over him and threatening to kill him if she ever hears from him again or if he ever threatens her friends and family.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The second time Harley and Power Girl go to another dimension is skipped over.
  • In Harley Quinn Annual #1 there is a bit where she, Ivy, and a few other characters meet Eggsy, a giant talking egg. They try to guess his Origin Story, only for him to get mad and refuse to tell. They say they're really sorry, and he says he'll tell. We (the readers) don't get to hear it, but it apparently takes three hours to tell, and is tragic enough that Harley decides to let him live at her place indefinitely.
• Note from Ed.: Queenie asks if they can't use another colour in the costumes of the Gang of Harleys, since using just red and black makes the place look like the bargain basement section at Hot Topic. Editor Chris Conroy takes the opportunity to plug the official Harley merchandise at Hot Topic.
• Nice Girl: Harley Quinn is this as she is sweet, kind, polite and friendly towards everyone even toward her enemies which even some are turned over to her because of her kindness and she is also pretty friendly towards the superheroes as well even though that some of them are her enemies as well. She also loves animals as she rescues a dog from being abused by his owner and even opens up a floor for the animals from the vet so that they could have a place to live at.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The story takes Harley and Power Girl to a space dimension after being sent through the Clock King's portal. However, once they return to Earth, they are promptly sent back through. The book cuts to their second return. What happened in between was subsequently depicted in full in the entire Harley Quinn & Power Girl spin-off miniseries.
• The One Guy: Harvey Quinn is the only guy in the Gang of Harleys.
• Out of the Frying Pan: When Clock King and Sportsmaster attack the boat where Harley is having dinner with her parents, they end up randomly teleporting to get away from her... only to materialise in Power Girl's bathroom. While she's naked in the shower.
• Parking Payback: In Harley Quinn Holiday Special #1, Harley is looking for a car to steal and decides to steal the one that is taking up two parking spaces because it is taking two parking spaces.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Harley's not shy about killing those who try to kill her. In issue #2, a hitman tries to run her over. She ties him up and later throws him to her hungry new pets to save her stuffed beaver. The next morning, there's nothing but his bones left.
• Peking Duck Christmas: In Harley Quinn Holiday Special #1, Harley takes a Mall Santa out for dinner on Christmas Eve to thank him from saving her from a humbug that was stuck in her ear (Makes Just as Much Sense in Context). The only place that is open is a kosher deli.
• Personal Raincloud: Harley gets one on Valentine's Day in Issue 3, blurring the lines of reality by soaking her hair, which stays wet until the scene changes.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In issue 1, Harley rescues a neglected dog from his owner and keeps him as her own. The dog is much happier living with her.
  • In issue 2, Harley and Poison Ivy break into an animal shelter that euthanizes its unwanted animals and free them all. They turn Harley's studio into an indoor park and keep them there.
  • There's also the time when she gives a woman who was robbed some money after the robbers got away. And another where she shares her pizza with a homeless man and gives him a hug.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: Bolly Quinn is shown doing this in the 'meet the gang' page of Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys #1.
• Polyamory: Amanda and Jimmy refer to Harley and Ivy as "girlfriends without the jealousy of monogamy". During their run, Harley has at the very least serious flirtations and probably outright sexual relationships with Ivy, Mason, and Red Tool at much the same time, and none of them object despite their seeming awareness.
• Psycho Psychologist: Surprisingly averted. Harley takes a psychiatric position at an old peoples' home, and does her best to help them, usually succeeding. She also sometimes goes into benevolent psychiatrist mode with antagonists who she feels sorry for, especially Harley Sinn, and Sparrow in #21. Of course, given that she's more than a little off, her tactics for therapy sometimes stray into a mental equivalent of Meatgrinder Surgery...
• Punny Name:
  • Sy Borgman, and most of the Russians, whose names are actually pretty subtle until read out loud. They include: Ivana Brekemoff ^note  I wanna break 'em off, Kosta Armanoleg ^note  Cost an arm and a leg , Borya Tatierski ^note  Bore you to tears, Yuri Beyznatofin ^note  Pays not often and Zena Bendemova ^note  Bend 'em over .
  • Edgar's full name is Edgar Fullerton Yeung. In other words, egg foo yung.
• A Rare Sentence: From Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys #6:
  Harvey Quinn: One of Power Girl's robot boobs saved your life. Well, that's a sentence I never thought I was gonna say.
• Rasputinian Death: One of Sy's enemies is an old man in a coma. Sy cuts his life support, but he doesn't die. Sy cuts his breathing tube, but still doesn't die. Then Harley takes a crack at it and blows into the breathing tube, making the man's arteries explode. That finally does it.
• Reimagining the Artifact: Edgar "Eggsy" Fullerton Young, the freakiest of all Harley's pals (an inexplicably sentient egg in Power Armor), is an attempt to produce a tolerable new version of Silver Age Wonder Woman villain Egg Fu, a massively despised character due to his ludicrous nature and gross ethnic stereotyping.
• Resolved Noodle Incident:
  • The Harley Quinn & Power Girl miniseries described what happened during Harley's and Kara's second dimensional trip in the New 52 issue 12.
  • One of the stories in the 25th Anniversary special depicts Harley, Ivy, and Selina throwing an utterly out-of-control party in their hotel suite in Las Vegas, which was a Gilligan Cut Noodle Incident in the Road Trip special.
• Retired Badass: Issue 4 introduces Sy Borgman, a former government agent of the Sixties who got blown up taking out a Russian terrorist group. His arm, leg and eye were replaced with state-of-the-art (for the time, at least) bionics, but in his old age, they're just extra weight.
• Reunion Show: The Road Trip Special features Harley with Ivy and Catwoman, and is hence a revival of the 2009-11 Gotham City Sirens series featuring the three of them.
• Road Trip Plot: The special one shot Harley Quinn Road Trip Special features Harley, Ivy, and Selina travelling together to get the ashes of Harley's beloved uncle. Hijinks ensue with Fanservice and a dream/hallucination sequence included.
• Robot Buddy: Edgar Fullerton Yeung, or "Eggy" as Harley calls him. Either a robot or cyborg (the comic cuts away when he begins telling Harley and company his origin, returning when he finishes) shaped like an egg on a floating platform who can assimilate a variety of robotic torsos. Originally, he captured Harley simply out of loneliness, but now works as a handyman in her apartment. His later recounting of his family background implies he's a cyborg, as he mentions having parents.
• Rollerblade Good: In order to pay the bills of her new home, Harley tries out for a roller derby team. She absolutely demolishes her competition and the team leader is proud to have her aboard.
• Running Gag:
  • There's much Lampshade Hanging of the many Dream Sequences and Mushroom Sambas in the series.
  • Harley's repeated fangirling at Comic-Con, which consists of "Hey, it's that guy/girl who [long-winded summary of their most famous roles]. I LOVE that guy/girl!"
  • Edgar's secret origin, which involves an astonishing number of Noodle Implements.
• Scenery Censor: Used a lot in issue #8, when Harley and Ivy visit Sy's holiday camp in Florida, which they haven't been told is a nudist colony.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • In issue 0, Harley and Catwoman try to rob a yacht and the book's writers, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, try to stop them. Amanda tells Jimmy not to hurt Harley because she's gonna pay their bills. Catwoman then riffs on Jimmy's other comics, All-Star Western and Batwing.
  Harley: Is she serious?
  Catwoman: You see the numbers on All-Star Western and Batwing? ^note They weren't very high.
  Harley: Yeah, let's go easy on him. Maim, not kill.
  • In the same issue Bernie calls Jimmy the cowboy guy because he writes All-Star Western. He also calls Amanda the one who draws the girls with the big...
  Amanda Conner: Hey, I'm talented! I can draw a lot of different-sized boobs!
  • In #16, letterer John J. Hill breaks the fourth wall to complain about the lack of consideration he gets from Amanda and Jimmy, having to reletter the comic three or four times over with all the changes to the scripts they throw at him. (He also appears to be chained up.)
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Devani "Batfan" Kage and possibly Red Tool, although it's anyone's guess just how much of what he told Devani was true are sent back from a potential future to kill Harley, since in that future she is generally believed to have killed Batman.
• Sexy Jester: A lot of Harley outfits have a design and color pattern similar to that of a typical court jester and show off a lot of skin.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • In issue 4, one of Harley's patients is a elderly woman who is sad that her family rarely sees her. Sickened, Harley goes to the family's house, kidnaps them, forgets about them for a while, remembers them, takes them to the pier, and berates them for neglecting their elder. However, the elderly woman's son reveals that they see her all the time; she just has Alzheimer's disease, which makes her forget. Harley then realizes she should've looked at the files first.
  • Poison Ivy's plan to end the hit on Harley. While she successfully finds out who placed the hit (it was Harley herself; turns out she did that while sleepwalking to ensure no one would try to disturb her in her new life - regardless of how counterproductive the whole thing may seem), some assassins come in and destroy the computer before she can take over and cancel the bounty, leaving Harley to deal with the problem.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Harley doesn't seem to care who sees her naked or how comfortable they are with it.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Issue 1, a blue and green van called the Munchie Machine can be seen at the roller derby.
  • When Harley enters Coney Island, a man can be seen wearing V's mask.
  • Harley begins singing "The Hills Are Alive" when she realizes that the entire fourth floor of her building is her apartment.
  • In issue 2, a wax statue of Jason Voorhees can be seen in the wax museum.
  • In issue 4, Harley stomps on a train set while saying that she's Godzilla.
  • The diner scene in Issue 4 is one big reference to the "Han shot first" scene in Star Wars: A New Hope.
  • Issue 5, one of the issues where Harley and Sy are fighting his enemies, is called "The Hunt for Red Octogenarians".
  • In issue 9, Harley mentions a blind lawyer she knows in Hell's Kitchen. She also references I Dream of Jeannie.
  • Take a good look at her autograph book in the Comic-Con special. Look familiar?
  • The Valentine's Day special sees Harley re-enacting Titanic (1997) on the Hudson River ferry ("I'm the queen a' the world!").
  • In Issue 2 of Harley Quinn/Power Girl, Harley is confronted by an extermination robot while on a peaceful planet. She asks the people she's with if they happen to have a museum with a Weapons of the Past exhibit.
  • The movie posters at the cinema Harley and Ivy visit in #16 all come from that month's themed variant DC covers, parodying classic movie posters. The films they see are Mad Max: Fury Road and Fifty Shades of Grey.
  • Also in #16, Edgar's using a number of his robotic bodies to multi-task. Harley, noting how the bodies are dressed, wonders if he calls it "the Village People mode".
  • Harley reveals in Harley's Little Black Book #3 that she bought a full set of (non-functional) Ghostbusters equipment in case she ever needed to go ghost-hunting.
  • In #16, Edgar compares the Psycho Serum seaweed Captain Strong is hopped up on to senzu bean, spectrox, and glitterstim. Ivy points out that all of those are fictional and that he watches too much TV.
  • When Harley discovers that Sy has tied and gagged a nursing home worker who was stealing and selling off equipment, she calls him "Irving Klaw", a reference to the NYC porn publisher who was notorious in the 1950s and retrospectively for his softcore bondage material.
  • Issue #29 is called "Destroy All Mobsters!", featuring Harley noting that she can see "Leo an' that blue necklace!" in a Titanic-themed snowglobe, and wondering where Charlton Heston is upon seeing an Omega Bomb.
  • Issue #30 references A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with the title being "A Tree Blows Up Brooklyn", and Big Tony commenting "This tree grows in Brooklyn, so it's all of ours ta fight for."
• Show Some Leg: During their first team-up, Harley distracts a mugger by showing him her butt window on her leotard until Power Girl swoops in.
• Skinny Dipping: Harley and the roller derby girls go skinny dipping in #10.
• Smarter Than You Look: Harley may be a loony clown girl, but she's actually very smart and used to be a psychiatrist. This is brought up in issue 1, where she interviews for a job as a therapist. She gets the job in issue 2. She uses her psychologist's training to help a Loony Fan and a little girl.
• The Smurfette Principle: Inverted with the Gang Of Harleys (a team of Anti-Heroes that dress like Harley and have superhero names similar to her own). Only one (Harvey Quinn) is male.
• Something Else Also Rises:
  Harley (on Ivy's plant powers): See! She really can make things grow!
  Big Tony: Yer telling me!
• Stripperiffic: While she had a traditionally conservative costume where only her face is uncovered, the New 52 makes her outfit incredibly revealing. This is lampshaded by Harley herself (in the Suicide Squad series), at one point referring to her look as a "stripper clown outfit".
• Sugar Apocalypse: Art Baltazar's page in issue 0 has her visiting the Tiny Titans universe. She hates how sugary sweet the setting is and tries to smash the Titans with her mallet. She gets even more mad when she realizes they don't even bleed.
• Super-Deformed: Harley when pleading with Power Girl in issue 13, her eyes going anime-sized and streaming with tears.
• Take That!:
  • Harley dismisses Batman's origin in #9 as ridiculous.
  • Issue 12 lampoons the cosmic elements of the Marvel Universe, namely Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet, and the Cosmic Cube.
  • Issue 15 features a potshot at Avengers: Age of Ultron (or perhaps the perception that a billion grossing film can bomb), with a newspaper headline about a superhero Box Office Bomb that features an Ultron stand-in with a Gag Nose, whose failure is somehow blamed on Kim Jong-un.
  • The Valentine's Day Special takes aim at pointless comic crossovers that go nowhere and Wall Street bankers.
  • At the end of the annual, Harley reveals that she stole some of the hallucinogenic gas to share with Ivy. Ivy freaks out, saying that it's powerful enough to cause all of Brooklyn to hallucinate, to which Harley replies that nobody would notice.
  • Issue 30 has Harley making a stand against gentrification.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Harley's auditions for her gang in #16. Played with, as the craziest interviewee turns out not to be a throwaway character, becoming Harley Sinn, the main villain of the Gang of Harleys miniseries.
• There Are No Rules: This is Summer's summary of the underground 'Skate Club' in #10 (also became the trope page's quote):
  Summer: Welcome to Skate Club, kiddo. Two go in, one comes out. Weapons at your disposal in the middle. Anything goes.
  Harley: An' the rules?
  Summer: None.
  Harley: Really?
  Summer: Yep.
  Harley: Yeah?
  Summer: Yeah.
  Harley: WOW!
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Amanda Conner when she beats up Harley and Catwoman in #0:
  Amanda Conner: I'm Amanda Conner, bitches!
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Big Tony is dating Queenie, a fortune teller who towers over the other tenants. In fact, Tony's "type" is Amazonian women.
• Toilet Humor: Under Connor and Palmiotti, Harley makes plenty of fart and poop jokes, including farting herself.
• Token Good Teammate: Eggsy is pretty much the only member of Harley's crew who is usually kind to all and shrinks from violence.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Implied. In Harley's Little Black Book she agrees to spend thirty days in hell with the Devil (Well, A devil, at least) in exchange for him removing someone's curse. When she materializes back on Earth only a day later, she has Tears of Joy running down her face as she exclaims "Let's do it again, an' this time add more spikes, and a big rubber-" before the devil says he just can't deal with her anymore. She even seems kind of disappointed about not being able to spend more time with him.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In Harley's Little Black Book #3, Harley makes a Deal with the Devil that means she has to stay in Hell for thirty days, only to be sent back to Earth before the first day's up for being too annoying.
• Torpedo Tits: In Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys #5, the gang wind up fighting a Power Girl robot armed with what Bolly Quinn eloquently describes as 'boob cannons'.
• Trumplica: Richard Brand, ruthless real estate tycoon and the father of Harley Sinn, is blatantly inspired by, and physically resembles, Donald Trump.
• Tyke Bomb: The first issue of Harley's Little Black Book shows that she has always been dangerously close to losing it, such as showing an incident when she was very young where she nearly hangs one of her classmates and smashes another in the face with a book hard enough to break her nose.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Harley's costumes vary a lot throughout the series. She's openly depicted as dressing to fit the theme of an adventure a few times, but often it just seems to be chance (for example, different issues by the same artist may depict her top as anything from a cropped gym singlet to a strapless bustier). They're always red and black, and usually involve a bare midriff and knee-socks that expose her thighs.
• The Unreveal: Edgar's backstory, which he tells the group after they've recovered from the hallucinogens. Once he starts telling, the comic cuts to another scene.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Harley herself. Justified for her apartment building in that all of the carnival freaks live there, but no one bats an eye anywhere else she goes.
• Valentine's Day Episode:
  • Issue 3 takes place on Valentine's Day and Harley has no Valentine. To cheer herself up, she eats a berry from one of Poison Ivy's plants and goes out for a night in the town. Unfortunately, the berry turns out to be a Love Potion that makes anyone who smells her go crazy for her. And she just happens to pass by a prison bus full of convicts. Bloody hijinks ensue.
  • The Valentine's Day Special sees Harley win a date with Bruce Wayne at auction (the auction gets interrupted by robbery and kidnapping, but they do manage to have the date).
• Vehicle-Roof Body Disposal: Goes comically awry in Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys #2. Harlem Quinn and some guys from her neighbourhood attempt to get rid of the unconscious assassin Sandy by dumping him off an an overpass on to a stopped train. However, he wakes up, falls off the roof of the train and gets hit by a train going in the opposite direction.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Harley finds her wanted poster in the shirt of a hitwoman that tried to kill her. Big Tony thought she was searching for something else at first.
• Wake Up Fighting: In Harley Quinn Invades Comic-Con International San Diego, Harley falls asleep beside the hotel pool. When a waiter shakes her awake, she wakes up yelling "Hit! Hit! Hit!" and punches the poor guy.
• Waterfall Shower: In Harley's Little Black Book #6, Harley and Lobo take a waterfall shower while stranded on an alien planet. It nearly turns into a Shower of Love, but they are interrupted.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Harley's Little Black Book #5 is a parody of the famous Superman Vs. Mohammed Ali one-shot from 1975, featuring Superman and drawn by original artist Neal Adams.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In Harley's Little Black Book Issue 2, Harley gains a Black and Red power ring and it turns her into an homicidal nutjob — well, more of one — who wants to destroy the whole world.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: With all the Yiddish Sy Borgman says, you won't have to wonder if he's Jewish.

Vol 3

More of the same

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Harley's encounter with Hugo Strange reveals that she has this to a degree, as a natural consequence of having been in sexual relationships with both the Joker and Ivy.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Jonni DC, a "continuity cop" and personification of DC continuity.
• Armed with Canon:
  • In the Black Label Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey, Harley asks Huntress her opinion on two possible costumes, one of which is one of her usual costumes from the comics and the other of which is her costume from Suicide Squad (2016). When Huntress picks the former, Harley approves.
  • Also in that miniseries, Harley mocks Harley Sinn for believing that her heavy tattoos make her "interesting", which seems like a swipe at the depictions of both Harley and the Joker as heavily tattooed in the DC Extended Universe.
• Book Ends: The first and last arcs of the Humphries run pit Harley against Granny Goodness. Despite the lack of obvious in-universe linkage, it's metaphorically appropriate to confront DC's highest-profile survivor of domestic abuse with DC's Anthropomorphic Personification of child abuse.
• Captain Ersatz: Issue #69 features barely-camouflaged versions of the McDonaldland characters (Hambezzler, Clown McCrown, etc.).
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • Takes over during the Rebirth half of the Conner/Palmiotti run — it never loses the humour or the Bloody Hilarious element, but the comic is increasingly taken over by a very long arc about Harley's conflict with the Mayor, who is no longer comically corrupt but utterly evil, and in the final issues features one of Harley's love interests being brutally killed off, which leads to an entirely serious Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • The overall arc of the Humphries run has Harley realising that her carefree Heroic Comedic Sociopath persona is no longer enough to protect her from realising how screwed-up her personal life has become.
• Chained Heat: In #57-8, Harley handcuffs herself to Batman as a token of her willingness to co-operate when they investigate a murder that somebody tried to frame her for.
• Color-Coded Characters: The Gang of Harleys.
• Continuity Nod: When trying to calm Captain Triumph down, Harley changes into her 1940s-style period costume from the DC Comics Bombshells crossover in Little Black Book.
• Cops Need the Vigilante: Chief of Police Spoonsdale moves from tolerating to actively helping Harley as the Mayor increasingly prevents him from fighting the crime that the corrupt mayor is actively involved in.
• Covers Always Lie: The covers of #35-6 (the Man-Bat arc) depict Man-Bat-transformed Harley as a Cute Monster Girl with unchanged facial features. In the interior art, she's depicted with the usual Man-Bat design, including horrific bat head.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: At the end of the Gotham Legion of Doom arc, Condiment King decides to stay in Coney Island and go straight, after his hot-dog-seasoning abilities make him a legit local success.
• Decapitation Presentation: As the climax of Harley's Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Mason is killed, the Mayor wakes up in bed with Madison's severed head placed upright between his legs. And yes, Harley probably did mean the obvious symbolism.
• Episode of the Dead: The series starts with Coney Island invaded by zombies. Their origin? An alien named Vertigax crash-landing on a farm and disguising himself as a cow, who accidentally gets butchered. After the meat-processing, we see that Vertigax has been shipped all over as various meat products (particularly Coney Island hot dogs), contaminating everyone who eats him. This, naturally, results in zombies.
• The Future Is Shocking: Obscure Golden Age hero Captain Triumph gets accidentally transported to Harley's era and doesn't deal with it well.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Happens when Harley's friends try to subdue her after she becomes a Man-Bat. It doesn't work until Francine attacks them and arouses her protective instincts.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: In the Tieri run, Harley cuts herself off from her friends after Mason's murder makes her think that she's a Doom Magnet. It's made much worse by Hugo Strange messing with her head.
• Jenny's Number: Mason Macabre is Prisoner 8675309.
• Jungle Princess: Harley is so upset by her mother's funeral that she retreats to the volcanic island that appeared just of Brooklyn in an earlier issue to play Jungle Princess games.
• Kill the Poor: The overarching plot-arc of the Rebirth era has Harley fighting a corrupt mayor of New York, with her pivotal This Is Unforgivable! moment being when he (it was his second-in-command's idea initially, but he loved it when he heard) hires a South American cannibal cult to "clean the streets" by killing and eating the city's homeless people.
• Legion of Doom: The first major arc of the Tieri run has the Penguin, still holding a grudge after his confrontation with Harley early in the Rebirth era, inviting every Gotham villain to cause havoc in Coney Island.
• Life Will Kill You: A major subplot of the Humphries run is Harley's mother dying from cancer, which Harley doesn't react well to.
• Magic Kiss: When Harley is dosed with fear gas by Scarecrow, Ivy snaps her out of it with a kiss, powered partly by love and partly by a buttload of oppositely-mind-altering substances.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The cannibal cult laughingly deny being vampires, and they don't show any unambiguous inhuman powers, but they have a very creepy appearance and are very strong.
• My Eyes Are Up Here:
  • In Issue #5, Harley says this to the Police Chief that is distracted from her legs.
  • In Issue #8, it's Sy's turn to say this to Harley when she meets him at a nudist colony.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Issue #8 opens with a dream sequence featuring Harley in her original costume.
  • In Issue #7, Harley is in a superhero-themed BDSM sex club and, on spotting a girl doing a sexy routine with a trapeze bar in a cage, says that she did that once and it was fun, a reference to a Workout Fanservice scene from Suicide Squad (2016) that became notorious through its heavy appearance in the trailers.
  • In Issue #12, there's a kinda-sorta dream sequence going over the Joker and Harley's history that includes Mad Love, with Harley in her original costume.
  • In Old Lady Harley, when Harley and her friends visit Lobo's casino in Las Vegas, Harley and Selina are irritated to see exotic dancers dressed in even sexier versions of their costumes. The costumes are based on those that were given to Harley in Suicide Squad (2016) and the Patience Phillips Catwoman in Catwoman (2004).
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: Harley loves these too. Only in the first page of the Rebirth-branded Issue 4 we have "destructavated" and "vacationating".
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: The concept of issue #50, caused by Harley reading a Doujinshi about herself.
• Recursive Canon: Within this comic, Harley's participation in the DC Year of the Villain event is fanfiction about Harley by Meredith Clutterbuck, which includes considerable metafictional debate on whether crossover events are a good or bad thing.
• Retool: The Humphries run, while not entirely dropping Harley's Coney Island community, features a lot more interactions with the wider DC universe. While the comic issue numbering continued unchanged, the numbering of the TPBs began at one again.
• Sad Clown: The ongoing theme of Humphries' run on the title is that Harley's chaotic, thrill-seeking lifestyle and "I'm mad, me" posturing is a coping mechanism to avoid dealing with her very real emotional problems and the darkness of her past, which is beginning to break down. It's unclear if this was planned, but it acts as a plausible transition from the pure black comedy of the Conner-Palmiotti issues to Harley's characterisation in the Joker War crossover event and her subsequent relaunched comic spinning off from it.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: After being made an angel by the Lords of Order and Chaos, Harley tries to force them to resurrect her mother, which fails when her mother doesn't want it.
• Self-Deprecation: In #51-2, when Harley contacts Jonnie DC to report back about Captain Triumph, Jonni is locked into a room with several variants of Donna Troy, attempting to sort out her notorious Continuity Snarl.
• Shout-Out:
  • Issue #2. The green alien that became a cow (and caused a Zombie Apocalypse) is a reference to a famous Fantastic Four story with the Skrulls hypnotised and turned into cows.
  • In Issue #5, when Harley first sees herself in the mirror after having her hair styled as a mohican, she exclaims "Holee Wendy O-lee!", a reference to the USA's most famous female mohican-wearer, Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of the band The Plasmatics.
  • In Issue #33, Mason's crates of valuables include one labelled The Brave and the Bold 28, a reference to the famous and extremely collectible issue that introduces the Justice League of America to Silver Age DC, and recurring DC universe villain Starro the Conqueror.
  • An issue in which Harley starts to turn into a giant ant is titled "Metamorphosis".
• Shower Scene: Several with Harley. Issue #3 has also Ivy take a shower with her.
• Stalker with a Crush: During the Humphries run, Lord Death Man develops a crush on her.
• Take That!:
  • Issue #4 sees Harley going on a crusade against call center scams.
  • Issue #56 is a gigantic parody of the "Gamergate"/"Rabid Puppies"/"Comicsgate" type of misogynist right-wing geek, as Harley attracts the attention of a group of fanatical MRA pet keepers.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: In the final Conner/Palmiotti arc, Mason Macabre, Harley's love interest throughout the series, gets his head blown off in front of her by the Mayor in an attempt to intimidate her. She doesn't take it well.
• Truer to the Text: Inverted case in Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey. Ostensibly a spin-off from the Birds of Prey (2020) film, the title's characters are more accurate to their original comic versions instead of the movie's. Harley is the same as from her Rebirth solo comics, Black Canary is the traditional blue-eyed-blond white woman, Cassandra Cain is more like her Orphan identity but still mute like back when she first debuted and then was the new Batgirl, and Helena Bertinelli is a composite of both her pre-New 52 and Rebirth versions, while Renee Montoya is a composite of her comic and movie versions.
  • Issue #2 includes a guest appearance by the original founder of the comics' Birds of Prey herself, Barbara Gordon, who wasn't in the movie. Instead of being Oracle, though, she's Batgirl but is out of action due to a broken leg (accident).
• The Unreveal: In Issue #6, Tony asks Edgar what he is. Edgar tells him about his upbringing, but not about what he actually is. (He apparently has parents, so there's that.)
• Wake Up Fighting: At the beginning of Issue #8, Harley reflexively throws a knife at Eggsy when he wakes her up, killing him. Fortunately it turns out to be a nightmare.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Minor Disaster is obsessed with getting her supervillain father Major Disaster to acknowledge her. She finally accepts that he's just an asshole.
• Whole-Plot Reference: #42 and the subsequent Old Lady Harley miniseries parody The Apunkalypse in general, but specifically Mad Max (especially Fury Road in #42 and Beyond Thunderdome in the miniseries) and Marvel's Old Man... Bad Future stories.

Vol 4

Back to Gotham

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• Bat Family Crossover: Issues #6-9 tie in to the "Fear State" Gotham crossover event.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Keepsake, a former minion and stalker to multiple Gotham villains, who really wants to be in the big league himself but isn't up to it.
• Brick Joke: Several issues later, it turns out the Bat-branded toaster that Harley persuaded Batman to give her was cheap and nasty, and set fire to her flat.
• Byronic Hero: A rare female example.
  • Harley drops a lot of her Heroic Comedic Sociopath schtick and reveals a deeper self-loathing over the things she did as The Joker's minion. She's intelligent, athletic, and conventionally attractive, but she's also extremely psychologically warped and damaged by her past relationships. She knows that she can never make up for the atrocities she helped him commit or all of the lives she helped destroy, but tries regardless because it's the only way she can live with herself. This vulnerability is what allows people, even someone like Batman, to take pity on her, and make her a tentative unofficial member of the extended Bat-Family.
  • One of the reasons that Harley genuinely hates Punchline is that Harley can't help but see a version of herself in Joker's new sidekick, but one with absolutely zero redemptive qualities.
• Chained to a Railway: Keepsake does this to Kevin in order to mess with Harley.
• Costume Copycat: Verdict slaughters a bunch of mafiosi in a restaurant while dressed as Harley in order to frame her.
• Creator Cameo: In the boxing dream sequence in issue #17, artist Riley Rossmo and writer Stephanie Phillips appear in the audience and have a brief dialogue exchange.
• Dating Catwoman: Averted. After being briefly reunited with Ivy, Harley breaks up with her again in #10, after Ivy wanted to round off their date with a spot of armed robbery despite Harley genuinely trying to stop committing crime.
• Determined Defeatist: Harley knows that she can never make up for the atrocities she did in the name of the Joker, nor can she rebuild all of the lives she helped destroy. But she tries to do the right thing regardless, because it's the only way she can live with herself. It's this side of Harley that allows her to gain a second chance from the Batfamily.
• Easily Forgiven: Harley lampshades how easily Hugo Strange seems to get hired as the head of SAFE despite his own lengthy history of Mad Scientist and Psycho Psychologist supervillainy.
• Eye Scream: Verdict's calling card is to remove one of each of her victims' eyes, as a pun on "eye for an eye".
• Face Doodling: Harley's idea of a disguise after Batwoman breaks her out of prison in the "Verdict" arc is to draw a moustache and goatee on her face.
• False Soulmate: Kevin's girlfriend Sam turns out to be the villain Verdict.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In the 2021 Annual, Kevin and Solomon Grundy do a mysterious and sinister deal with Mr. Freeze for information on Keepsake. It's then revealed that the "deal" was for the two of them to act as childrens' entertainers at Freeze's niece's birthday party.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: When Kevin is trying to decide whether to rescue Lockwood from a fire, his shoulder angel and devil are both sexy versions of Harley, who then have a Cat Fight.
• In Prison with the Rogues: When Harley is accused of murder, she ends up in Blackgate prison with a bunch of female prisoners who despise her attempt to go straight and want to ingratiate themselves with Punchline by killing her.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When Kevin finds out that she's Verdict and rejects her, Sam decides to suicide-bomb Gotham City Hall and kill everyone inside, regardless of how corrupt or not they are.
• Mook–Face Turn: Harley's new sidekick Kevin is a reformed former mook for the Joker.
• Mythology Gag: Bengal's variant cover for #14 shows Harley's bedroom. Among the clothes hanging up are her corset-style dress from Batman: Arkham City, her harlequin-pattern minidress from Suicide Squad (2016), and her red dress from The Suicide Squad.
• The Needs of the Many: Keepsake sets up a literalised "trolley problem" for Harley by setting up a train laden with explosives that will either run into central Gotham and explode or run Kevin over. She naturally choses the second option and saves Kevin.
• Pet the Dog: After nastily confronting Harley at the beginning of the first issue, at the end of it Batman leaves her the Bat-branded toaster that she'd asked him for.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Before Harley beats her up, Kevin tells Sam that their break-up was entirely her fault.
• Pseudo-Crisis: Issue #4 ends with Harley being confronted with an apparently raging Solomon Grundy in Gotham's sewer system. At the beginning of the next issue, they're having a friendly conversation.
• Retool: The series, after some years, brings Harley back to Gotham and is far more closely aligned with Batman and general DC continuity.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: In the flashback to Verdict's origin, Harley immediately kills a corrupt cop who was bribed by the Joker to let her escape custody.
• Safe Word: When arrested and handcuffed by the cops in the "Verdict" arc, Harley jokes that her safeword should be "sauerkraut" because "it's fun to say".
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: Keepsake uses mind-control drugs borrowed from Hugo Strange to temporarily turn Harley's friends into inferior knock-offs of various big-name Gotham villains.
• Shout-Out:
  • While fighting Keepsake at one point, Harley goes on a lengthy rant about her love for the Terminator franchise and Sarah Connor in particular.
  • In her narration in #13, Harley admits to having a sexual attraction to the hero of Robin Hood (1973).
• Special Person, Normal Name: As Harley's sidekick and would-be hero in his own right, Kevin hasn't developed a costumed-character name yet, leading to various characters being underwhelmed when he introduces himself.
• Stalker with a Crush: Subverted with Keepsake and Harley, he acts stalkerish to her but he isn't motivated by desire for her so much as really, really wanting to be the Joker, with having Harley as a girlfriend being part of that.
• Tamer and Chaster: Harley's new costume designed by Rossmo is basically a tank top and tight full-length pants, in contrast to the extremely revealing costumes that she's been notorious for since the New 52 era. (Although some artists other than Rossmo draw it with a lot of cleavage.)
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Harley's costume in this era has a tank top, and she's as violent and crass as ever.
• Tattooed Crook:
  • Rossmo's new design for Harley gives her playing-card-suit club and diamond (which sometimes changes to a heart depending on her mood) tattoos on her shoulders.
  • Kevin has a Monster Clown face tattooed on his enormous chin.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: Harley attempts to set up a support group for other ex-Joker minions, but its first meeting gets attacked by agents of Hugo Strange's anti-"clown" group SAFE.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Harley persuades Annie not to kill Keepsake by convincing her of this.
• Vigilante Man: The brutally murderous new Gotham vigilante known as Verdict.
• Where's the Kaboom?: Happens when Verdict tries to detonate the bombs at City Hall, because Batwoman defused them.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: During the "Fear State" tie-ins, Hugo Strange tries to kill all his former SAFE minions by burning down the building.

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