Film / Suicide Squad (2016)

Worst. Heroes. Ever.^note L - R, top to bottom: The Joker, Killer Croc, The Enchantress, Rick Flag, Amanda Waller, Slipknot, El Diablo, Katana, Harley Quinn, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang.

"Don't forget, we're the bad guys."

— Deadshot

Suicide Squad is a 2016 superhero black comedy movie based off the DC comic books of the same name, directed by David Ayer. It is the third installment in the DC Extended Universe.

The movie revolves around a group of incarcerated supervillains who are recruited into a secret, deniable and expendable government task force led by the ruthless Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) in exchange for reduced sentences, and not having their heads blown off by bombs planted in their necks.

They have to rescue a person (whose identity initially is kept from them) from the evil Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) in Midway City; she has destroyed much of the city and magically turned many humans into her Humanoid Abomination mooks. The team is led, and kept on a leash, by Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who also has a personal interest in this mission since the Enchantress demonically possesses his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, The Joker (Jared Leto), who was in a (very dysfunctional) relationship with Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) prior to her imprisonment, is executing a plan to rescue Harley during the mission. As they get farther into the city and towards their destination, the Squad goes from a Dysfunction Junction comprised of people each only looking out for their own good, to warming up to each other and forming a bond.

Other actors and actresses include Scott Eastwood, Corina Calderon, Alex Meraz, David Harbour, and Ike Barinholtz.

Previews: First Look, Trailer 1, Trailer 2, Final Trailer.

As was the case for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, an Extended Cut of the film is paired with the home video release of the theatrical movie. The movie won an Academy Award in 2017 for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

Harley Quinn's story is continued in 2020's Birds of Prey. A follow-up to Suicide Squad, titled The Suicide Squad, was released in August 2021. Not to be confused with a 1935 movie of the same name about firefighters,

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All my tropes are heathens, take it slow:

Tropes A to F

• Actor Allusion: In one scene, Amanda Waller kills her staff for knowing too much while receiving no comeuppance. She is quite literally getting away with murder.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • Similar to her depiction in Green Lantern, Viola Davis is far more slender and attractive than the original comics version of Amanda Waller, who is heavyset and weathered with age. Although, compared to the younger, taller, and more slender version seen in Arrow and the New 52, she is closer to the former than the latter.
  • Metal teeth, lack of eyebrows, and tattoos aside, the Joker's still being played by the very attractive real life Pretty Boy Jared Leto and taking the last two Joker incarnations into account. There is also a glimpse of what the Joker would look like as a normal person, which is basically Jared Leto without any of the make-up or teeth. Because of what we are accustomed to, it's disturbing.
• Adaptational Ugliness: The Enchantress looks much messier and creepier than her comic book counterpart... at first. It's then subverted when she achieves her true form, who looks quite serviceable.
• Adaptational Dye-Job:
  • The tips of Harley Quinn's pigtails are dyed liked in Batman: Arkham City, but the coloring is pink and blue, not red and black. Though this is more consistent with her New 52 Suicide Squad which changes the black to blue.
  • In Brian Azzarello's Joker, Jonny Frost sports long blonde hair. In the film, he has short brown hair.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Evident in how the characters function as conventional protagonists for the genre despite being villains. Most apparent with Deadshot and Boomerang, the former being much less sociopathic and even sparing Harley when killing her would have led to custody of his daughter, and the latter having his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder tendencies severely downplayed. In addition, the Joker's love for Harley seems genuine rather than simply pragmatic use, even going far as rescuing her twice.
• Adaptational Skimpiness: Enchantress wore full-length dresses in the comics while the film has her in something of a Chainmail Bikini. However, the fact she looks like she is rotting away skews it more towards Fan Disservice. Downplayed when she is given power by Incubus to sustain her until she regains her heart in the third act. In these scenes, she wears a dress that still shows skin but is most definitely not just a Chainmail Bikini.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • While Amanda Waller is morally questionable at best, shooting her interns and assistants because they didn't have a high enough clearance is a new low. Waller's also shown to be dramatically more of a coward than in the comics, notably prioritizing her own survival over stopping the Big Bad. In the comics, she has insisted upon her own Explosive Leash as a contingency to avoid her ever compromising a mission.
  • Rick Flag is also hit surprisingly hard with this, considering his comic book counterpart is often the Token Good Teammate. Not only is he perfectly fine with the above example after it happens, but he is also generally more antagonistic and conceited to both the Squad and his superiors (this is especially apparent due to the majority of the Squad's Adaptational Nice Guy mentioned above).
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The film draws inspiration from multiple Suicide Squad stories and other DC works.
  • The team is made up of characters from both the original '80s series and the New 52 era reboot. The designs of some of the costumes (specifically, Deadshot's, Katana's, and Harley's) seem to be inspired by the latter.
  • Jonny Frost was a character previously exclusive to Brian Azzarello's Joker one-shot.
• Admiring the Abomination: Waller becomes fascinated about the Enchantress' ability to create an instant army by transforming regular people into monsters. You can just tell she's considering what she can do with it once it's under her control.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Jared Leto's Joker was prominently featured in advertising before the film came out. Turns out he doesn't have much screentime and is not the movie's main villain.
  • Of the team, Adam Beach's Slipknot was also prominently featured in the promotional material surrounding the film, portraying him as an actual member of the team. In reality, he is the Sacrificial Lamb to show the Explosive Leash is real.
• An Aesop: Nobody, no matter what they've done, ever thinks of themselves as being "the bad guy." Everyone is the hero of their own story.
• Affably Evil: The squad's members are all convicted criminals with blood on their hands, yet they have a true sense of camaraderie. They also warm up to Katana, possibly sensing her loneliness.
• Affirmative Action Girl: Katana is this in-universe, joining the squad as a second female member. She's even replacing the intended recruit, Enchantress, as if "Task Force X" really did have a gender quota.
• Alliterative Title: Suicide Squad.
• All There in the Script: Scott Eastwood's character's name is Edwards.
• All Wishes Granted:
  • The Enchantress uses her mental abilities to find out what several of the Squad's members want most of all (Harley wants to be married to the Joker, Deadshot wants to kill Batman, Rick Flag wants his girlfriend June Moon to no longer be possessed by the Enchantress and Diablo wants his family to be alive again) and offers to fulfill the wishes. She doesn't offer anything to Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang or Katana. Subverted when the Squad refuses the Enchantress's offer.
  • At the end, Amanda Waller, the person in charge of the Squad, realizes that she needs to give the criminal members more than just a reduction in sentence to keep them docile. When Deadshot demands to be allowed to see his daughter, Waller agrees and asks the others what they want. Harley asks for an espresso machine and Killer Croc asks to be allowed to watch BET (Black Entertainment Television), both of which are granted. When Captain Boomerang demands to be allowed to leave the Squad entirely, Waller refuses and he gets nothing.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The theme song for the Japanese version is "WILD WILD WILD" by EXILE THE SECOND.
• Ambiguously Human: Killer Croc is usually depicted as an ordinary human with a skin mutation that just so happens to make him look reptilian. A close look at his eyes reveals what appears to be nictitating membranes, hinting that he may be a completely new species. He can also swim better than normal people, even when they're trained divers.
• Anti-Villain: The Squad is full of hardened criminals, hitmen, and psychopaths but that doesn't mean they aren't willing to save the world if pressed.
• Arc Symbol: Skulls, or at least skull faces, show up quite a bit on promotional material. However, this symbolism is not important in the film and only appears during the character introductions.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "We got contingency plans for nukes in North Korea, anthrax in our mail, we've got fluoride in our water [...]"
• Artistic License – Linguistics: Enchantress steals a top secret document from the Iranian government, but its pages are bound on the left side, which is the wrong side for texts written in Farsi.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • The actor playing Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) was 37 years old when the movie came out in 2016. This means that Rick Flag is ludicrously young for his rank. Maybe in 10-15 years he'd realistically expect to make Colonel.
  • Waller brags to a room full of military men that she's compromised Flag to control him. In reality, this would get them both pulled from duty, and would likely have led to charges against Waller.
• Asshole Victim: Slipknot is introduced striking a female agent for her "mouth" (though to be fair, it wasn't wise from her to call an unrestrained criminal "scumbag"). Presumably, this is so we don't feel bad when his head is blown up when he tries escaping not long after.
• The Atoner: Diablo initially refuses to use his powers, out of remorse for killing his family using them.
• Ax-Crazy: Harley Quinn. It's not really her fault as she had her brain literally fried by the Joker using an electroshock machine.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Joker is wearing a tuxedo when rescuing Harley from the Squad.
• Badass Longcoat: The Joker sports a long purple trenchcoat.
• Badass Normal:
  • Waller specifically recruits the Suicide Squad for countering metahuman threats that Superman would otherwise have fought. Even so, only Diablo and Killer Croc have actual powers, while the rest rely on their skills and gear.
  • The Special Forces troops that accompany the Suicide Squad on the mission. While they mostly serve as Red Shirts through the course of the movie, a handful of them survive to the final confrontation. The last one dies helping take down Incubus with a bomb.
• Bad Boss:
  • Amanda Waller treats the Squad as expendable cannon fodder. She also has no qualms about straight up murdering all the staff in her control room because they knew too much.
  • Waller also emotionally compromises Flag to keep him under her control. This is a dramatic failure, as Flag allows Enchantress the time to operate unhindered because he's worried how Waller would react.
  • The Joker invites a gangster to explore the charms of Harley Quinn, then kills him for it.
• Bad Guy Bar: Downplayed example. The Squad finds refuge at a bar at one point and decide to get a few drinks; Harley herself acts as the bartender.
• Battle Boomerang: Captain Boomerang's weapons are bladed boomerangs, as his name may indicate. He also uses explosive boomerangs in a scene, but they're less effective against the metahuman he's fighting. Even so, his body count is second only to Deadshot's.
• Battle Strip: Killer Croc pulls off his shirt before one fight. Justified, as the fight is going to be underwater.
• Beast Man: Killer Croc, who looks like a humanoid crocodile.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: A part of Dr. Quinzel becoming Harley Quinn involved being strapped down to a table by the Joker, who proceeded to tell her he's going to hurt her "really, really bad" while holding two electrodes. The novelization of the film adds that Joker performed electroshock therapy with none of the safeguards^note Except that he did put a belt between her teeth, because he "Wouldn't want to break those perfect, porcelain-capped teeth when the juice hits your brain.". Instead of killing her or turning into a vegetable, it erased her previous personality and rewrote it in the image of the Joker's insanity. Although, given that she fell in love with a known psychopath who she was meant to be giving therapy to, and possibly supplied him with a weapon to help him escape, her sanity was already pretty shaky before the electroshock therapy.
• Berserk Button: Do not verbally threaten Deadshot. He takes it very seriously.
• Beware the Superman: Invoked, even if Superman himself is currently (and apparently) dead. After reflecting how one man with his power could have changed the world for the worse, the government assembles a whole team of people with powers (or at least special abilities) under their control.
  Waller: Getting people to act against their own self-interest is what I do for a living.
• Big Bad: The Enchantress hatches a plan to free herself from Amanda Waller and then uses Midway as her base of operations to take revenge against the humans who betrayed her and her brother.
• Big Brother Instinct: Deadshot acts like Harley's big brother, keeping her (somewhat) on track, and even missing her when ordered to shoot her down during the escape attempt. He never misses because he refuses to hit his surrogate little sister.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Rick Flag, who as a military colonel can utter an impressive voice volume, delivers one; the SHUT UP! has all the more impact because it is preceded by a seemingly respectful "Lady". It even jars the normally quite outspoken Harley Quinn into silence.
  Flag: [telling the Suicide Squad they have nano-bombs implanted in their necks] You disobey me, you die. You try to escape, you die. You otherwise irritate or vex me, guess what... you die.
  Harley Quinn: I'm known to be quite vexing, I'm just forewarning you...
  Flag: Lady, SHUT UP!!!
  [Harley gives a faux naughty-child look and pouts]
• Bittersweet Ending: The Suicide Squad saved the world... but Diablo is dead and despite their work, all of them have to go back to jail. Waller faces no comeuppance for her crimes, but she gives the team what they asked for (i.e. Deadshot getting to visit his daughter, etc.). Also, in the end, Joker breaks Harley out.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The actual antagonists the Squad were sent to stop are undeniably evil, being Abusive Precursors bent on destroying the world's technology to make sure they dominate mankind, while the Squad are largely small time crooks, save for Deadshot.
• Blatant Lies:
  • The government's cover story for what prompted the evacuation of Midway City is that terrorists with machine guns and chemical weapons attacked it... all the while a massive swirling vortex of mystic energy and flying debris around a Pillar of Light can be seen hovering over the downtown. This is lampshaded by Deadshot, who tells Flag that he's an awful liar.
  • Captain Boomerang insists he was just minding his own business when the Flash appeared out of nowhere and beat him unconscious. He also tells Slipknot that the explosive implants are just bluffs. (However, as he tries to escape a few moments later, he may believe that one.)
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Joker wields a gold-plated Type 56-1 when he arrives to pick up Harley in Midway City.
• Bodyguard Crush: Flag was assigned to guard and watch Doctor Moone (who is possessed by Enchantress), and inevitably they fall for each other. Which is how Waller planned to control Flag.
• Body Horror: Enchantress, Incubus and their army of meat puppets. The meat puppets, who are named in the behind-the-scenes extras as the "Eyes of the Adversary", so named because their heads are entirely covered with black eyes. At least Enchantress and Incubus have the proper number of facial body parts.
• Bookends:
  • The movie starts with various members of The Team in their cells with a rocking soundtrack, specifically Deadshot using his mattress as a makeshift punching bag and Harley doing rope gymnastics in her cell. The end of the movie has the group back in their cells, but subverted for Harley who gets broken out by Joker.
  • The movie starts with Amanda Waller having dinner to discuss the creation of group of supervillains, and ends with her having dinner with Bruce Wayne while discussing the creation of a group of superheroes.
• Boxed Crook: The film revolves around supervillains running suicide missions for the US government in exchange for reduced sentences. In a case of a Visual Pun, Deadshot can be shown using a punching bag, making him a literal boxing crook.
• Brick Joke:
  • Harley says "Normal is a setting on a dryer! People like us, we don't get Normal!" The vision Enchantress causes on her starts with a Brought Down to Normal Harley pressing this exact button.
  • Captain Boomerang is seen putting a pink unicorn doll in his pocket while gearing up. He later drops it in the middle of a fight and picks it up afterwards.
• Broad Strokes: James Gunn's DCEU reboot is said to have The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker as part of its continuity. Since The Suicide Squad itself references this film, this indicates that at least some version of this film's events still happened in the reboot.
• Broken Aesop: The film is meant to be about The Power of Friendship and how even anti-heroes have friends. Unfortunately, it rings a bit hollow as the team bonding feels forced and doesn't really develop naturally. This is made worse by the fact that there were several deleted scenes that show more bonding and Character Development, making you wonder why the hell they deleted them in the first place.
• Broken Masquerade: Depicts another stage of the masquerade being broken that began in Man of Steel with the Kryptonian invasion and Superman's arrival. Other superpowered individuals and the existence of magic is still not public knowledge even to high-ranking government officials, and the events of the film start pushing the envelope open even further.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Boomerang mocks Diablo (who just so happens to be capable of releasing fire like a dragon) for thinking he's intimidating just because he happens to be pyrokinetic.
    Boomerang: Aah, you think you're the fire bloke, eh? Well looky 'ere. [opens his lighter] FIRE. Ooooh!
  • Deadshot does this intentionally, poking Diablo with his finger to annoy him into helping. After seeing what Diablo can do, he's quick to point out exactly why he was doing it.
  • Captain Griggs continuously mistreats and abuses the prisoners at Belle Reve, even though he knows they're highly dangerous supervillains. When Harley tells him he's screwed as she's being escorted to Midway City, he's smart enough to be visibly scared.
  • Waller treats Enchantress like a dog on a leash. You can see in her eyes that she's just waiting for her chance to break free and pay her back.
• The Cameo:
  • Batman has quite a few, since the Task Force X includes some infamous Gotham criminals he had to deal with:
    • He is first seen arresting Deadshot.
    • He then gets into a car chase with the Joker and Harley Quinn before saving Harley from drowning, giving her a Kiss of Life and apprehending her.
    • Enchantress' powers make Deadshot hallucinate his fondest dream: seeing Batman dead.
    • Bruce Wayne has a private meeting with Amanda Waller in The Stinger. He agrees to help her to deal with the mess her Task Force X project caused in exchange for information on some meta-humans he needs to form the Justice League. He also makes a point about dissolving the Suicide Squad. Should Amanda not abide, his "friends" (the Justice League) will take care of that.
  • The Flash is seen — very briefly — stopping a robbery carried out by Captain Boomerang, leading to his arrest and eventual sentence to Belle Reve. The telltale sign of Flash's presence is the lightning that erupts in front of him.
• Cape Busters: Task Force X was created as a response the possibility of a "Superman level threat", i.e. a being showing up with his power but not his humanity. While only two proposed members could count as genuine counters to said threat, the others were recruited for both their valuable skills and destructive potential.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Harley Quinn is at least very aware that the members of the Suicide Squad are assholes:
  Rick Flag: Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?
  Harley Quinn: [rolls eyes] We're bad guys. It's what we do!
• Cassandra Truth: Diablo early on refers to his powers as "he" and says "That man is dead". Flag ignores it, but he and Amanda Waller clearly are slightly confused on why he does that and clearly think he's lying to get out of the Squad. Turns out, he does have some sort of a separate entity inside him like Enchantress. It's a little unclear though how much of this is a persona he uses to keep things separate now or if he does have some sort of an Aztec fire god inside of him.
• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, it's not the first time Takehito Koyasu (The Joker) voiced a villain who has many supporters as insane as he is.
• Cavalry Betrayal: A helicopter arrives to extract Waller and the Squad from Midway City. However, the chopper fails to respond to hails from the Squad and then opens fire on them, having been hijacked by the Joker and his gang.
• Ceiling Smash: In a flashback, Killer Croc takes on a SWAT team in the sewers and at one point, slams an officer into the ceiling of the tunnel.
• Central Theme: Family. The Big Bad Duumvirate are siblings that care deeply for one another, Diablo and Deadshot both have families that motivate large parts of their actions, Harley's deepest wish is to start a family with Joker, and the Squad themselves grow into a strange little family themselves, as Diablo lampshades.
  Diablo: I've lost one family already; I won't lose one I have now.
• C-List Fodder: Slipknot and El Diablo are not very prominent characters in the comics, so naturally they're the two members of the Squad who are dead by the time the credits roll. The latter at least got a decent amount of screentime and characterization before making a Heroic Sacrifice, while the former was nothing more than a Sacrificial Lamb.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Courtesy of the Joker.
  Joker: Oh, I'm not gonna kill ya... I'm just going hurt ya really, really bad.
• Cold Sniper: Deadshot, one of the best, if not the best, marksmen in the world. Flag calls him a "serial killer who accepts credit cards" and he nonchalantly haggles on the price for a kill in the movie. He's also a subversion, in that Deadshot's openly concerned about family, Harley, and the rest of the team, which brings him close to Friendly Sniper.
• Combat Stilettos: Harley wears spike heels both before and after becoming superpowered — but she only fights in them after her transformation. Actress Margot Robbie noted that this made the movie very painful to film, but it doesn't slow Harley herself down at all.
• Combat Tentacles: Incubus fights with tentacles that shoot out of his hands, which smash/melt whatever they hit.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
  • Averted. Given names are invoked now and then, but most of the time Deadshot is just called Deadshot, Katana is just called Katana, etc.
  • It's zigzagged with the actual team name. The term "Suicide Squad" is used only once. The rest of the time, the group is referred to as "Task Force X". (Which in the comics is the name of the agency overseeing Suicide Squad.)
• Companion Cube: Boomerang keeps a fluffy pink unicorn in his coat. He seems unusually attached to it, and calls it "Pinkie".
• Concealment Equals Cover: The Squad end up getting ambushed by The Joker in a helicopter laying down a stream of minigun fire, and most of them manage to take cover behind rooftop HVAC units, which the minigun would have shredded through in short order in real life.
• Continuity Nod: Makes a connection to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in a very concise way.
  Waller: [voice-over] The world changed when Superman flew above us.
  [sidewalk vendor shows her a Superman T-shirt]
  Waller: It changed again when he stopped.
  [vendor turns the shirt over showing "Remember" on the back]
• Cool Car: The Joker drives a metallic purple Infiniti G35 Vaydor with a "HAHAHA" license plate. Of course, it comes off as rather ordinary, however, when it's being chased by the Batmobile.
• Cool Sword: Katana's Soultaker Sword, which takes the souls of its victims just as it does in the comics.
• Darker and Edgier: With regards to Harley Quinn: Margot Robbie stated the director encouraged her to be menacing whenever she wanted to play Harley for laughs.
• Deadly Delivery: A delivery van pulls up at Van Criss Laboratories with a gift basket for someone inside. The guard refuses to let them in as they're not authorised, so the driver just passes him the basket which promptly explodes. The Joker and his goons then pile out of the van and shoot their way inside.
• Death by Adaptation: Slipknot survived his Explosive Leash detonation in the comics.
• Death Seeker:
  • El Diablo surrendered to the police after he lost control and killed his wife and children. He's been seeking atonement ever since. When approached by Waller, he says he's perfectly happy to stay in his cell until he dies.
  • Averted with Deadshot, who has this as a primary motivation in the comics but not here.
• Demonic Possession: Enchantress and her brother Incubus are non-corporeal entities that need to possess a host to function on Earth. Implied with Diablo as well.
• Despair Event Horizon: When the squad is at the bar, Deadshot believes they have failed their mission and reminds the team that everything will be blamed on them.
• Desperate Object Catch: Harley tosses Deadshot his pistol so he can set off the explosives that Croc just tossed into the World-Wrecking Wave-generator. Given the glare, roiling energies, and general chaos, he's presumably the only one who could make the shot.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Enchantress and her brother Incubus are extra-dimensional entities worshiped as gods in the distant past, and are the Big Bad Duumvirate of the film. The Suicide Squad manage to kill Incubus via Diablo tapping into a "fire god" mode and directing him over a powerful demolition charge. Enchantress herself has an Achilles' Heel, her heart, and can be used as either a torture device or, as happens in the film, crushed to kill her. Of course, being extra-dimensional entities it is unclear if they were killed or they no longer had a foothold on this dimension.
• Differently Powered Individuals: Building off themes brought up in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Metahumans are discussed as one of the justifications of the Suicide Squad. Among the main cast, Enchantress and El Diablo are the only ones with extra-normal abilities, while Killer Croc's exact mutation skirts the line. Waller gives a speech about the importance of understanding and controlling metahumans. "We all heard the stories of Samson leveling the temple with a single push. What about the weapon of mass destruction named Goliath? The next war will be fought with these metahumans. Ours, or theirs."
• Dirty Coward: Boomerang alternates between this and Cowardly Lion. He's usually the first to run and hide or buckle under pressure, but he refuses to let his teammates die without him.
• Disney Death:
  • When Harley attempts to escape on the Joker's aircraft, Amanda Waller immediately commands Deadshot to shoot her. He obeys, and shoots Harley as she flies off, seemingly killing her. A few seconds later, she wakes up, revealing that not only did she fake her death, Deadshot ultimately chose to spare her life.
  • In the same scene, as the Joker and Harley make a clean getaway, their helicopter is suddenly shot down by Waller's forces. Before it crashes, Harley is tossed to safety by the motion of the helicopter beginning to fall, leaving her puddin' to perish in the ensuing explosion. Later, at the end of the film, mysterious gunmen break into Belle Reve to help Harley escape. Who's the ringmaster behind all this? None other than the Joker himself.
  • Once the Enchantress is defeated, Rick Flag demands that she free June, or else he'll crush her heart and kill her. The witch then eggs him on to do it, saying that he doesn't "have the balls"; regrettingly, he does, ultimately killing both the Enchantress and June. As he grieves over murdering his beloved, June suddenly emerges from the Enchantress's body, alive and well.
• Distinction Without a Difference:
  • Exploited by Harley to unnerve the military unit in charge of guarding Task Force X.
    Harley: What was that? I should kill everyone and escape? Sorry... it's the voices. [Beat] Hahaha, I'm kidding! That's not what they really said.
  • Boomerang is very specific about his profession:
    Boomerang: I'm not a thief. I'm an asset relocation specialist.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Joker. Even other criminals are extremely wary of crossing him.
  • Waller insinuates that Harley is even worse than Joker in some respects, saying she is crazier and more fearless. The tattooed man at Joker's place appears to have been killed after having been caught between these two. He really didn't want to incur Joker's wrath by making out with his woman, despite apparently having his blessing, but he also didn't want to disrespect Harley by insinuating she's not worth the effort to make out with.
  • Waller herself. She may be blackmailing Batman.
• Dwindling Party: The Squad's military escort. Half are captured in the first battle, more are lost during the tower fight, and the remaining are executed by the sewer abominations, until finally only Flag remains.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Enchantress and Incubus are extra-dimensional entities that possess humans and used to be worshiped as gods, although their precise nature and origin are explained only in the vaguest of terms.
  • This also appears to be the origin of El Diablo's powers. This too is never really illuminated, and in fact it comes right out of left field.
• Escalating War: The arrival of Superman is blamed for the scores of superpowered villains suddenly popping up all over the place.
  Waller: Maybe Superman was some kind of beacon for them to creep back from the shadows.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Deadshot's an amoral assassin, but loves his daughter dearly. Batman even exploited this to get Deadshot to surrender to him.
  • Unlike most interpretations of their relationship, the Joker actually seems to love Harley equally as much as she loves him. He's still an abusive asshole, but the abuse seems much more psychological and it obviously comes from a history of pain. (Not that that justifies it, of course.)
  • El Diablo is wracked with guilt over killing his family when he let his temper get out of control.
  • Enchantress and her brother Incubus seem to genuinely love one another. Incubus has no problem sharing power with her until she gets her heart back, Enchantress is clearly horrified when Incubus is killed, and after her defeat she begs the Squad to finish her off and rejoin her with her brother.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Deadshot seems downright disgusted when Waller kills her staff for knowing too much. Despite being a professional assassin, he has a rule against killing women or children.
  • The squad is clearly horrified/disgusted when they learn El Diablo accidentally killed his wife and children with Harley yelling at him to own up to it. In her case, as an extra layer, her anger towards him could also mean self-hatred and jealousy, given her dream of having a family.
  • Everyone is mad when Flag comes clean and reveals their real mission is to protect Waller from the escaped Enchantress and cover up her involvement in the incident.
  • The whole plot of the movie is this; the Squad may not care for a life in prison as Waller's glorified slaves, but it's still preferable to whatever hellish existence the Big Bad has planned.
    Harley: I'm not much of a joiner... but maybe we should join Enchantress.
    Deadshot: Hey! She's trying to take over the world!
• Even the Girls Want Her: When Harley Quinn switches from her prison uniform to her signature clothes in the middle of a military base, everyone (except Killer Croc) stops to ogle her, including at least one prominently presented female soldier.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: The various criminals and psychos in the Squad for the most part get along swimmingly to the point that Harley and Deadshot immediately start coordinating their escape plans. This is probably a case of Enemy Mine, as Waller has press-ganged them all, so they're all in the same boat, yet they become Fire-Forged Friends by the end of their mission.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Amanda Waller thinks she can control Enchantress indefinitely. It backfires dramatically.
• Explosive Leash: All members of the squad (save Rick Flag and Katana, who are there to keep Task Force X in check) have bombs implanted in their necks. If any of them get any ideas about escaping, then Your Head A-Splode.
• Extra Eyes: The Mooks here are ordinary people Enchantress turns into "Eyes of the Adversary", covering their heads and arms with entirely black eyes.
• Extranormal Prison: Belle Reve, where the eponymous team is recruited. It's Waller's personal blacksite, where she "threw them in a hole and threw away the hole". Doesn't stop Joker and his crew from gatecrashing it and busting out Harley at the end.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The majority of the film, the mission, takes place over one night. Factoring in the set-up there, it's a couple of days for the problem to manifest and be resolved. The prologue and epilogue is implied to be a couple of weeks at most. The many flashbacks to demonstrate why the Squad is in prison and how Harleen Quinzel became Harley Quinn make it seem longer.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • While on a chopper delivering them to their mission, Flag doesn't seem to notice Harley is not-so-subtly texting Joker on her phone.
  • Later on, after Slipknot demonstrates that the bombs are not a bluff, Flag fails to notice Harley and Floyd openly discuss how the Joker will get them out of the squad.
• Fan Disservice: The Joker describes Harley Quinn as "the itch in his crotch".
• Fanservice Pack: The Enchantress being empowered by her brother not only alters her costume, it also inexplicably makes her breasts bigger. This is implied to be her true form.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Along with the aliens, mad science, and ancient Amazonian princesses of the previous two DC films, this one mixes in all-powerful rituals, ancient gods, magic swords, and genetic mutants.
• Fictional Counterpart: Various behind-the-scenes photos show various fictionalized versions of newspapers reporting "demonic killings" in what looks like a New York City set:
  • The New York Star-Register replaces The New York Times.
  • The Metro Star, a tabloid, appears to replace The New York Post.
  • Morning Gazette has a design that looks similar to The Daily News.
  • The New York Ledger bears similarities in design to The Wall Street Journal.
  • USA POST, a national newspaper, appears to replace USA TODAY.
• Feet-First Introduction: Harleen Quinzel's feet are the first we see of her. Doubles as something of an Establishing Character Moment; wearing stiletto heels and seamed stockings into an ostensibly professional interview with the Joker gives away that something else is going on here.
• Finger Wag: Joker can be seen turning around and giving a tsk tsk finger wag at an unseen assailant in one scene.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The members of the Squad didn't even know each other before their inaugural mission. By the end of it the surviving ones are willing to risk their lives for each other. In particular, Flag and Deadshot are particularly hostile towards each other, but by the end, Flag becomes one of Deadshot's most stringent advocates.
• For the Evulz: Will Smith stated in interviews that he had a hard time wrapping his head around the why Deadshot does what he does until he read a book on criminality, which stated on its first page that a certain criminal committed crimes simply because it felt good, and it was understanding why it felt good to this criminal that let Smith get inside Deadshot's head.
  Deadshot: [referring to his mask] Every time I put this on, somebody dies.
  Harley: And?
  Deadshot: I like putting it on.
• Force Feeding: Used to sadistic effect with Harley fed ice cream through a tube by Griggs.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At one point Boomerang harasses El Diablo over him staying out of the fighting. El Diablo says you don't want him to cut loose, showing a brief wall of fire from his hand. Inside the fire is a glimpse of his Fire God form.
  • When Griggs is held at gunpoint by Lawton, he instructs Aimes to be prepared to shoot Lawton and then clear his browser history. It sounds like a funny reference to his porn preferences but it's likely to cover his tracks with his gambling debt and ties to the Joker.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Most of the squad gets introductory dossier-type graphics, with a long list of their skills and personality quirks being listed too fast to read them all. When the story introduces Deadshot, a Long List of weapons he's proficient with appears, with potato cannon of all things flashing on screen for a moment. With Harley Quinn, it mentions she is an accomplice in the murder of Robin. With El Diablo, it's mentioned that the limits of his powers are unknown.
• Futuristic Jet Injector: Each member of the Squad has a nanite explosive placed in their neck with gun-like jet injector. This is so they can be killed if they try to escape or disobey orders during the mission.

Tropes G to L

• Game Face:
  • The Enchantress reverts back to her more hideous form when she enters the final battle herself.
  • Likewise El Diablo, awakening his full power turns himself into a colossal flaming skeleton wearing an Aztec feathered headdress.
• Gang of Hats: The Joker's gang appears to wear an assortment of Halloween masks and costumes, including but not limited to: a baby, a goat, an eyeball, a panda, and a cartoony Batman.
• Give Me a Sword: During the climatic battle, Harley throws Deadshot her pistol so he can shoot the explosives Croc throws.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Deadshot gives a mocking point at Rick Flag during their first mission.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Joker is said to bear a number of scars from his battles with Batman. It might explain the tattoos, and it could definitely explain the metal caps on his teeth.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: The Squad and Flag heroically come and save the world from the Enchantress, despite having no incentive to do so, with El Diablo performing a Heroic Sacrifice. Yet at the end of it they go right back where they started with Waller putting them back in their cells, and even getting her own incompetence and abuses covered up by Bruce Wayne. No-one knows that they saved the world.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Amanda Waller starts out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and the Squadmates are dangerous criminals and individuals who the US Colonel Rick Flag looks down upon for being mere mercenaries as opposed to a loyal soldier like himself. Yet Deadshot claims to never hurt women and children or cause collateral damage despite killing hundreds as a hitman, while Amanda Waller murders her own staff in cold blood because They Know Too Much and Rick Flag condones this action, much to Deadshot's disgust. Later the Squad for their heroic actions get screwed over by Waller with only a light lessening of sentences, while Waller gets bailed out by Bruce Wayne.
• Groin Attack
  • When Captain Boomerang and Slipknot attempt to escape from the rest of the Squad, Slipknot kicks one of the soldiers guarding them in the crotch to disable him.
  • Poor Harley Quinn gets a rare vagina-shot from The Enchantress during the final fight at the climax while the Squad is trying to put a stop to the witch's plans. It briefly puts Harley out of the fight.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Harley openly discusses her plan to escape with Joker's help with others while surrounded by soldiers. This means that the guards are either crazier than she is or just secure in the fact that they have the Squad under their collective thumb after Flag's demonstration.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot:
  • Between Enchantress and her brother Incubus, she's smaller, slender, and fights with Functional Magic while he's large, imposing, and fights physically. Although Enchantress can mix it up with Teleport Spam if necessary, she clearly prefers not to.
  • Played with within Task Force X. While all of them excel in hand-to-hand combat, Deadshot, Diablo, and Captain Boomerang lean more towards "shooting" (bullets, fire, and boomerangs respectively) while Harley Quinn and Katana are physical combatants. Then again, so is Killer Croc, and Harley has handguns as well.
• Hammerspace: Harley's clothes have nowhere to hide anything, but she manages to keep the cell phone Griggs slipped her hidden at all times, only producing it when needed. In her elevator fighting scene, she is holding her phone at the moment she is suddenly attacked, and she fights the attackers off — but we never see her either put away her phone when starting the fight, or drop the phone to the ground (the latter would have made most sense given the surprise attack, but a shot is shown of the floor of the elevator and there is no phone lying on the ground); in any case there's no way she could be fighting the attackers off while holding her phone, so it must have gone somewhere. We never see her either put away the phone or bend to pick it up from the floor, yet somehow later in the movie she still has her phone, as we're shown the Joker is still texting her.
• Healing Factor: Incubus gets his hand sliced off at one point, but it just grows right back.
• Hearing Voices: Harley claims she has voices in her head telling her to do... something.
  Harley: What was that? "I should kill everyone and escape?" Sorry... it's the voices. [Beat] Hahaha, I'm kidding! That's not what they really said.
• He Knows Too Much: Amanda Waller callously murders a room-full of her own staff because they have seen way too much stuff above their security clearance.
• Hellish Copter: Anyone who gets in a helicopter is in for a bad time. When arriving in Midway City, Task Force X's helicopter is shot down. The Joker's helicopter rescue for Harley is going in the right direction until it is blown apart by Waller and crashes along with the Joker. Waller's extraction is also shot down. CinemaSins points out that there are three helicopter crashes in this film, and major characters survive all three of them.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: The entire Squad's reaction when Diablo takes his true form. Up until that point, the fight against Incubus was very one-sided and practically suicidal, but once Diablo enters the fray the Squad realizes they actually have a chance of winning.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Diablo holds Incubus in place long enough for a bomb to go off, killing them both. Also the Red Shirt military guy who detonates the bomb.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The whole problem in the movie is a result of Waller's arrogance in thinking she had complete control over Enchantress, not evacuating when Incubus appeared, and still not evacuating when Enchantress openly changed sides and it was clear stabbing her heart wasn't stopping her.
• Hollywood Evolution: Killer Croc is described as a human who is suffering from some disease that makes him evolve in reverse. Aside from "devolution" not even being a real thing, even if it were, shouldn't he turn into a neanderthal or humanoid ape rather than a crocodile person?
• Humanoid Abomination: Enchantress transforms people into weird, pulsing goo creatures who serve as her mooks.
• I Have Your Wife: When the Joker and his goons shoot their way into the laboratory, there's a technician locked behind bulletproof glass. The Joker simply puts a computer notebook up against the window, showing a live image of the technician's wife being held with a knife at her throat.
• Implied Death Threat: Enchantress gives Flag a hallucination of Moone dying in a hospital bed, to stop him warning Waller that she's loose.
• Improbable Age:
  • Harley is a psychiatrist, which means she completed both medical school (8 years of undergraduate and medical studies) and a residency in psychiatry (another 4 years). Not only that, she was competent and experienced enough to be allowed to treat high-risk criminals like the Joker, hinting at a reputation that she must have worked to build for some time. Plus she's been a part of the Joker's gang for at least ten years, since she was mentioned as an accomplice in Robin's death, which took place that long ago — and yet she's twenty-six. This is possibly justified. Joker doesn't appear to have aged much either since they met, and Harley regularly displays abilities that few normal humans, let alone ones with no training, which may imply that the chemical they fell into changed their physiology.
  • Similarly, Enchantress' human host has a PhD (given she's referred to as Dr. June Moone), another process that takes several years to achieve, and only after completing at least one postgraduate degree. It is fairly possible to have achieved a doctorate by your late twenties, depending on your field, but an archaeology PhD in the United States typically takes about a decade to complete. And June's played by Cara Delevingne, who in real life was twenty-three at the time of filming and only a year or two older than most new college graduates (depending on how long an undergraduate degree takes to complete).
  • Downplayed, but still played straight with Rick Flag, being a Colonel played by an actor about ten years too young to have been awarded said rank. Granted, he is supposed to be the finest special forces operative the US has ever produced.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Deadshot, as per tradition. In contrast to the comics, where he is just a really good sniper, the film makes it very clear that he never misses and has perfect aim that is practically superhuman. In a scene showing him performing a contract, he is bugging his client into paying him in advance, as his window of opportunity is closing fast. When he finally gets paid, he casually performs a ricochet shot on a target three kilometers away via his wrist-mounted gun rather than his, more appropriate for the situation, sniper rifle. In a demonstration of his skills to Waller for Task Force X, he uses a variety of different handguns and assault rifles and makes only one hole in each metal target and consistently hits that same hole every time.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Waller's organization is shockingly bad; about the only thing that more-or-less worked is the Squad, and that was down to them more than her "leadership", and her faith in "complete control" over Enchantress caused the mess in Midway City to start with.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • As soon as Rick Flag explains what is driving their mission, Deadshot takes advantage of being right in front of a bar. ("You can go ahead and kill me now, but I'm gonna have a drink.") The rest of the Squad and even Katana follow him, leaving Flag and his soldiers in the rain.
  • Averted with Diablo, who only wants water. Even Harley admits that's a good idea for someone whose schtick is Playing with Fire.
  • Boomerang slips away to scoff down a beer during their first battle.
• I Never Got Any Letters: When the team is at the bar in the Darkest Hour, Flag reveals that all of Deadshot's daughter Zoe's letters were kept out of his reach, much to Deadshot's ire, and gives them to him.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Harley dons her outfit in the middle of a military base and is seemingly baffled why everyone (including a couple of women) are checking her out.
• Intro Dump: The film opens with Amanda Waller giving a low-down of the various squad members and their backstories.
• Ironic Name: The name of the prison the main characters are in at the beginning, "Belle Reve", is "Beautiful Dream". Given the treatment and living conditions of the prisoners, "Horrible Nightmare" would be a more fitting name.
• Iron Lady: Amanda Waller, a government official who created and oversees the Suicide Squad, and who doesn't take crap from anyone.
  Waller: All you need to know is that you work for me.
• I Surrender, Suckers: In the climax, Enchantress promises to spare the life of and grant the wishes of anyone who kneels and pledges their loyalty. Harley Quinn appears to do so and kneels... to pick up Katana's dropped sword and slash out her heart.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Lampshaded and averted; the first thing Deadshot does upon being issued a .45 pistol is point it at Griggs, the man he promised to kill earlier. However, Deadshot doesn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to give the best sharpshooter in the world a loaded gun, so he assumes it's full of dummy rounds and fires it in the air. To his shock, the pistol goes off. He then joyfully fires the rest downrange (killing Griggs would get him nothing, after all).
• It's What I Do: Harley when she smashes a store window to steal a purse.
  Rick Flag: Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?
  Harley: We're bad guys, it's what we do.
• Joisey: As shown in the dossiers such as Deadshot, Gotham City is a municipality located in New Jersey. Which makes Bruce Wayne a Jersey boy.
• Joker Immunity: As to be expected from the Trope Namer, he goes down with his hijacked helicopter when it crashes and explodes, yet somehow survives it to reappear in the movie's final scene to bust Harley out of Belle Reve (in the theatrical cut at least, there are evidences of Deleted Scenes showing his survival much earlier than Harley's prison break scene).
• Jumped at the Call: The second Deadshot realizes that Waller means to offer him a Boxed Crook position, he immediately and eagerly starts rattling off his terms for accepting. Later on this enthusiasm disappears once he finds out how Waller intends to run the arrangement.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Amanda Waller's incompetence unleashed the Enchantress leading to the destruction of Midway City, when the Squad come and rescue her, she murders her own staff in cold blood because they know too much, she survives the Enchantress and returns to screw over their victory and in the end, gets bailed out by Bruce Wayne.
  • Captain Griggs counts as well. Despite being pointlessly cruel to the inmates in multiple scenes, such as beating the crap out of Deadshot with a bat and force-feeding a screaming Harley Quinn while taking a selfie with her, as well as ending up being in cahoots with the Joker, the only bad thing that happens to him is having Deadshot point a gun is his face (only to for him to end up not even shooting Griggs).
• Kick the Dog: In the comics, Joker manipulated Harley Quinn into falling in love with him. In this, he also physically tortures her into forming a kind of Stockholm Syndrome relationship. The extended cut shows a flashback where he tried to leave Harley behind only for her to catch up on motorcycle and try to convince him at gunpoint to accept her love.
• Kiss of Life:
  • After the Jokermobile crashes into the river, Batman knocks Harley Quinn out and pulls her from the wreck. Back on the surface, he notices she is not breathing and starts to perform mouth-to-mouth. As soon as he does so, she wakes up and smooches him.
  • Joker gives one to Harley after jumping into the vat to save her at the ACE Chemical plant. They gleefully share a kiss afterwards.
• Lampshade Hanging: The movie's premise (using the worst criminals around for high risk black ops) is blasted several times and by several people as stupid, dangerous, and generally a really bad idea. Deadshot says "you all are crazy" for giving him a gun and live ammunition.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It's a minor element, but Superman's death is brought up during Waller's dinner.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Waller speculates that Superman was "some kind of beacon for meta-humans to step back from the shadows." This is true, both in-universe and in Real Life: Suicide Squad is a fairly obscure comic outside of the hardcore DC fandom, and many of the characters in this film probably never would have seen the light of day on the big screen if not for the success of Man of Steel.
  • "Purple Lamborghini" is a song made for the film, with lines directly referencing all of the characters in the team line-up (and the eponymous purple Lamborghini being the Joker's Cool Car). This doesn't stop the song from actually appearing in the club scene with the Joker, Harley, and the Tattooed Man with the only thing that saves the scene from outright breaking the fourth wall is playing the song through parts that don't make the direct references.
• Lecherous Licking: Near the beginning Harley is starts licking the bars to her cell, and cutely asks the guard to come in and play with her. To his credit, he doesn't fall for it.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The movie has considerably more straightforward humor and levity than the two previous entries in the DC Extented Universe.
  • The relationship between Harley and the Joker surprised a number of people for how passionate and mutual it was. In the comics it's usually more one-sided with Joker viewing her as more of a henchman to manipulate, rarely showing any affection and often being outright abusive to her. In the movie Joker spends considerable effort to find her and they are seen as an inseparable pair. However, when you dig deeper, you'll find that this is actually an averted trope, in that the abuse is much more psychological and the scenes of physical abuse, while shot and in the original script, never made it out of the editing room. So, while the abuse is still definitely there, the relationship is seen as a co-dependent addiction. There is zero percent romance involved.
• Lipstick-and-Load Montage: The Squad undergoes a Lock-and-Load Montage as they gear up before entering Midway City. Harley Quinn's doubles as a this as she strips and chooses her outfit and applies makeup as well as selecting weaponry.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: When the Squad gears up at the airport before entering Midway City. Probably also counts as a Lipstick-and-Load Montage for Harley Quinn.
• Logo Joke: The logos are briefly covered in graffiti (though the DC Comics one is more noticeable with the old logo in the trailer than in the final one).
• Longer-Than-Life Sentence: Seemingly Captain Boomerang, as he sarcastically tells Amanda Waller that having 10 years knocked off his three consecutive life sentences is not much of an inducement. As the final scenes show, sassing the Wall is a really bad idea, as she can always make your incarceration worse.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Enchantress ensnares the team in her illusions. We only see four of them. Deadshot kills Batman, Harley Quinn is married to the Joker and they have children, Rick Flagg is in bed with his girlfriend June Moone, and El Diablo is living happily with his wife and children. El Diablo is able to break free and wake up the others, because he accepted that his wife and children are dead.
• Lovecraft Lite: A small group of criminals, most of who are Badass Normal, manage to save the world from Enchantress and Incubus, ancient Eldritch Abominations once worshiped as gods.
• Love Redeems: A recurring theme in this movie is that while the characters are criminals and have done bad things, they're still people and like most people yearn for love, affection, and friendship. There are several instances where these normally amoral criminals do something heroic for the sake of love or camaraderie. Deadshot, at the end of the movie, is reluctant to stay involved anymore once the bombs inside their heads have been deactivated. Then he finds out that his daughter had been writing to him in prison every single day and the letters were withheld. While he is extremely angry he also is moved to the point of tears when he realizes that in spite of being a criminal and assassin, his daughter still loves him and accepts him even knowing he has done terrible things. Afterward he resolves to be a better man who is worthy of such unconditional love.

Tropes M to R

• Male Gaze: Harley's default outfit in the movie has her wearing hot-pants, and as such numerous shots tend to show her from behind. One bit has Harley Quinn bending down to steal a purse from a shop display while wearing them, with the camera lingering on her behind. She's also seen from below while climbing a rope. During a Lock-and-Load Montage of the squad getting ready the camera pans up the "interesting" parts of her figure when she puts on her outfit.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Several goons show up in a variety of masks throughout the film, including an oversized eyeball, a goat head, and even a Batman mask.
• Marquee Alter Ego: While Deadshot is rarely without his mask in the comics or on TV^note  Task Force X is notable exception, here he almost never wears his mask, lest Will Smith's face be hidden.
• Mauve Shirt: Lieutenant Edwards, Flag's right-hand man among Task Force X's tier one escorts. He survives to the final showdown where he triggers the one second timer on the explosive charge, killing Incubus, Diablo, and himself in the process
• The Mole: While in transit out of Belle Reve, a guard, namely Captain Griggs, slips Harley a cell phone. This could also be how Joker knows just where to attack to break Harley out at the end.
• Monster Clown: The Joker of course, a sociopathic terrorist and killer who dyes his hair bright green and has clown imagery tattooed all over his body.
• Morton's Fork: One flashback shows The Joker speaking to another gangster. When the gangster looks at the pole-dancing Harley, Joker's questioning basically forces him into the corner of A: turning down Harley thus insulting her and the Joker or B: accepting Harley thus risking angering the Joker. He goes with B, and dies for it.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Harley Quinn's costume includes some glittery hot-pants / briefs, and she likes to exercise in her cell by doing a Cirque de Soleil-esque acrobatic routine in her underwear.
  • Enchantress' costume consists of a black bikini with some ornamental chains.◊
• Muggles Do It Better: It turns out that a big enough bomb is all it takes to obliterate a powerful inter-dimensional entity like Incubus if used at point blank range. The problem lies in getting close enough to use it.
• Mythology Gag: Enough for a separate page.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • You really don't want to be recruited into a "Suicide Squad".
  • For specific members, "Deadshot", "El Diablo" and "Killer Croc" ain't exactly welcoming either.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailers made out the Joker's role to be much bigger than it really is. You've actually seen almost all of his scenes just in the ads. Jared Leto claims he filmed more scenes but most of them were deleted. No mention is made that Enchantress, not The Joker or anyone else, is the film's Big Bad.
  • Also, the trailers make the film out to be a planet-bound Guardians of the Galaxy for the DC Extended Universe, full of wacky, snarky Unscrupulous Heroes on a fun, satirical adventure. It's actually a dark, moody heist flick with near-suicidal Nominal Heroes looking for a reason (besides their Explosive Leashes) they should battle a nigh-unstoppable force for the sake of a world that has good reasons for fearing and hating them, and vice-versa. With a few jokes here and there.
  • In addition to that, the trailer makes it seem like the movie offers a significant alternative to the usual superhero movies. The fact that the protagonists are villains was glossed over through exposition and has little relevance to most of the story. The Squad actually behaved much more like antiheroes, which is quite a common trope.
• New Era Speech: The Enchantress gives one of these to the Squad near the climax of the movie to try and get them to join her, claiming that the emergence of the metahumans is nothing but a sign of a new age of magic that is about to begin.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Enchantress was seemingly not trying to take over the world and kill all, or at least most, of humanity until Waller went and tried to turn her into her own unwilling secret weapon.
• Enchantress isn't a threat until June frees her, and Waller makes her a member of the Squad. Waller believes she can control Enchantress. She can't.
• Noodle Incident
  • We never see how Joker manages to seize control of a heavily armed helicopter from special forces military personnel.
  • Just before the Joker goes to retrieve Harley, we see him in his apartment arranging a bunch of random items (knives, guns, roses, laptops), in concentric circle patterns. The reason for this is never explained.
• No-Sell: Diablo quickly throws off the Enchantress's illusion due to having completely accepted responsibility for what he did to his family and that he can't undo it.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Harley is being wheeled off to join the Squad, Griggs tries to suck up to her, knowing what the Joker will do to him when she reports on his treatment of her. The look on his face when she responds says it all.
    Griggs: You're gonna tell him I took care of you, right?
    Harley: You're screwed!
  • Even before this — Griggs keeps up his bravado when he's tasered and introduced to a gangster chopping meat in a meaningful fashion. Until the Joker puts his hand on Griggs' shoulder and starts talking — from his expression, Griggs knows exactly who's standing behind him.
  • Later on in the final battle, Harley whacks Enchantress upside the head with her baseball bat. It has no effect whatsoever, save to piss off an already enraged Enchantress even further. Harley's face when she realizes this and the fact she'd now got the full attention of an extremely angry witch with a sword in each hand who's been holding off the entire Squad with ease is this trope.
  • Incubus gets one when Diablo transforms into his Fire God form and proceeds to roast the crap out of him.
• Older Than She Looks: Harley would have to be at minimum 36 years old at the time of the movie, after 8 years of medical school to earn her psychiatry degree and at least ten years of crime with Joker (she is introduced as an accomplice in Jason Todd/Robin's death, which Word of God says was ten years ago), and is possibly even older, despite being played by 26-year-old Margot Robbie.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Margot, who is Australian, fades in and out from a more standard American accent to a thick New York accent (Harley traditionally has something of a Brooklyn or Jersey accent, Robbie uses more of a Long Island accent reminiscent of her role of The Wolf of Wall Street). It's at its thickest when she greets Katana, "Harley Quinn, nice ta meech'cha!" Given that Harley is crazy and as well as we see her at different stages of her life, it works.^note This may also have something to do with the film's many reshoots to achieve a lighter tone and its troubled editing process, as Robbie's accent in Birds of Prey is sustained throughout and much more broad.
• Outlaw Couple: While traditionally abusive in the comics, the Joker and Harley Quinn take on more of this role in the film. Probably due to the Joker returning Harley's feelings for him, where more traditionally he sees her as an annoying but occasionally useful henchwoman.
• Pintsized Powerhouse:
  • Harley Quinn is positively tiny compared to the rest of the team (even in stiletto heels most of them tower over her), but she is one of the most effective in hand-to-hand combat and during her incarceration she routinely injures men twice her size with her bare hands.
  • As seen in the team shots, Katana is even smaller than Harley, and yet is the only one besides Diablo who is able to even mildly inconvenience Incubus.
  • Diablo is notably shorter (and skinnier) than the other men in the unit, and yet he boasts the most power of the entire team.
• Plausible Deniability: Amanda Waller reasons that if Task Force X were to cause an incident, she and her associates could cover up any involvement due to the members already being havoc-causing Supervillains.
  General: They're bad guys?
  Waller: Exactly. And if anything goes wrong, we blame them. We have built-in deniability.
• Pet the Dog: For all her Kick the Dog moments in the film, Amanda Waller really does honor her deal of reducing the Suicide Squad's prison time down ten years upon them completing their mission. Not that it makes that much difference since all members got life sentences on them anyways, but still, a deal's a deal. If it's any consolation, though, she allows Deadshot a chance to visit his daughter, installs a big widescreen TV inside Killer Croc's cell as per his wish, and gives Harley her requested espresso machine, so maybe it's not that bad.
• Playing with Fire: Diablo has the power to create fire.
• Plot Armor: Harley and Deadshot were both known to be planned for further films by the time of this one's release, although the latter was ultimately replaced by Bloodsport in the sequel.
• Plot Hole: One that resulted from Executive Meddling. According to David Ayer, Joker got his metal teeth and "Damaged" tattoo after Batman gave him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in response to Robin's death. According to the movie itself, Harley was an accomplice in Robin's murder, yet Joker clearly has the tattoo and metal teeth during the flashback to their patient interview. Ayer said that he intended for Harley to meet Joker after Robin's death, but the studio had the editors slip in the (written) line about Harley helping kill Robin during post-production.
• Pocket Protector: While assaulting the federal building, Captain Boomerang gets stabbed in the chest by one of the zombies. After he cuts the zombie's head off, it is revealed he was saved by a huge wad of cash he has stashed in his jacket.
• Police Brutality: Belle Reve penitentiary was pretty bad at the start, with the likes of Deadshot subject to regular beatings (where he's strapped down in a chair and then beaten by a baton) and emotional abuse, while Harley Quinn in addition was also tortured by guards to run repeatedly into an electrified fence simply to taunt her, and likewise was attended by male guards while being washed in prison, alongside the constant sexism she is subjected to.
• Poke the Poodle: Mid-mission, Harley Quinn steals a purse on display. Rick Flag takes great offense to this.
  Rick Flag: What the hell is wrong with you people?
  Harley Quinn: We're bad guys, it's what we do.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Pretty much every character in the movie has no qualms about seeing someone as lesser beings. Part of their Character Development by the end of the film is how they manage to form a true squad despite their differences.
  • Guards at the prison do not treat Harley Quinn like a lady. Not that she acts like one to begin with.
  • In fact, neither does Joker, although with his randomness it's hard to tell.
  • To Killer Croc, Fantastic Racism is pretty much a daily routine.
  • El Diablo constantly gets slurs thrown at him.
  • Captain Boomerang can't spend a second without taunting someone on any basis imaginable.
  • Amanda Waller does not even try to hide that to her, everyone is expendable. The only way she acknowledges that metahumans are people too is in the "they have weaknesses" context.
  • Deadshot, normally having a "no women, no children" rule, gets to accept that in his universe any gender and age may be a façade for a dangerous entity, metahuman or not.
  • The Enchantress and Incubus surpass them all, though, with bitter hatred towards humans in general, considering themselves entitled to worship and more than willing to exterminate mankind altogether.
• Prisons Are Gymnasiums: Deadshot, Croc, and Harley are all shown either working out or doing other athletic activities in their cells.
• Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a former Arkham Asylum psychiatrist-turned-psychotic criminal.
• Pummeling the Corpse: Harley does this to one of Enchantress' Mooks after the first real battle with them, and has to be stopped by Deadshot.
  Harley: What? I saw it move? [kicks body] There, see, it twitched. I think.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "Worst. Heroes. Ever." (In trailers and promotional posters of the movie)
• Race Lift:
  • Deadshot, in the comics and all other portrayals in the media is Caucasian. Here, he's portrayed by Will Smith, who's African-American.
  • Slipknot in the comics is Caucasian. Here, he's played by Adam Beach, a First Nations Canadian.
• Real Is Brown: While the introductions and flashbacks use vibrant, neon colors from Harley's perspective, the majority of the film's real-life scenes have a very dull and very gritty color scheme much like its predecessors, due to most of the colorful material being added or changed in post-production in response to Batman v Superman.
• Recruiting the Criminal: The group is comprised of criminals who are being sent on black ops missions for the government.
• Re-Cut: Like Batman v Superman, the home video came with an extended cut adding another 12 minutes of footage. Unlike BvS, most of the additions are superficial, adding small character pieces rather than changing the overall story. The most notable are a few more exchanges between Deadshot and Flag, an additional flashback with Harley chasing down Joker in his Lamborghini and an extended bar scene.
• Red Herring: Cara Delevingne posted some hints (including fan-art) on Instagram that she'd been cast as Harley Quinn, likely to hide the fact that she was actually playing the Enchantress. However, there was a time when she was in the running to play Harley, so she might have been jumping the gun a bit.
• Red Shirt Army: The Special Forces teams sent along with the Suicide Squad to keep them in check don't seem to have good odds as being both a target for the criminals desperate to escape and the threat they're supposed to combat.
• Refuge in Audacity: When Joker stages his jailbreak of Harley disguised as a security officer, the front of his uniform has the word "JOKER" clearly displayed.
• Repurposed Pop Song:
  • The first look trailer is underscored by a very, very dark cover of "I Started a Joke" by The Bee Gees — which mirrors Harley Quinn's history as the discarded henchman of a Monster Clown, and the Suicide Squad as a whole being criminals who thought they could take advantage of the system, only for the system to take advantage of them in turn.
    I started a joke
    Which started the whole world crying...
    But I didn't see,
    That the joke was on me...
  • Official trailer 1 has "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen playing, with the lyrics matching up to what's happening onscreen.
• The Reveal: The HVT they need to extract is Waller and her tech team; that control room they're in is the vault. No, wait, make that just Waller.
• Rogues Gallery: Task Force X and their targets are made up of the enemies of various Justice League members and other superheroes. Batman has the largest representation, with Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and Killer Croc playing roles.
• Romanticized Abuse: Harley and Joker's relationship is presented from her warped perspective and Joker has Adaptational Nice Guy (relatively speaking) which means that their entire relationship is shown as an authentic Outlaw Couple with mutual affection and unexpected tenderness and a Masochism Tango. Even when Joker appears to torture Harley electrically in their first flashback, Harlene appears to consent to the torture, and later she willingly dives into a vat of chemical, with Joker hesitating briefly before diving in after her.
• Room Full of Crazy: One of the Joker's hideouts, which is filled with knives, guns, bombs and playing cards positioned in intricate circular patterns, and for some reason, baby clothes.
• Rubber-Forehead Alien: Killer Croc is accomplished through extensive prosthetics on Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, rendering him entirely unrecognizable but surprisingly emotive still (heavy make-up often gives the best actors trouble). This work was one of the reasons the film won an Oscar.
• Rule of Symbolism: Doubling as a Call-Back, in Harley's fantasy, the camera focuses on her pressing the "Normal" button on the washing machine, before panning around to show her and her puddin' in domestic life, with two kids in tow.

Tropes S to Z

• Sacrificial Lamb: Slipknot is introduced late in the first act for seemingly no reason, then bumped off a few minutes later just to prove to the audience that the Squad handler's threats are not idle.
• Save the Villain: At the beginning of the movie, Batman saves Harley Quinn from drowning. And then promptly arrests her.
• Scapegoat: If anything goes wrong, the Suicide Squad will be blamed for everything that happens and disavowed by the government.
  Deadshot: So that's it, huh? We're the patsies.
• Scary Black Man: Killer Croc, as played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. With his scaly skin, sharp teeth, brute strength, and appetite for humans. It's of course possible to watch the entire movie without realizing his ethnicity, until they throw in a joke at the very end to emphasize the point.
• Scary Teeth:
  • The Joker's already creepy grin is enhanced with metal caps on his teeth.
  • There's also Killer Croc with his razor sharp teeth, perfect for devouring other people.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: How Amanda Waller intends to avoid responsibility for the events of the movie; she cuts a deal with Bruce Wayne so he'll use his political connections and money to cover her ass. He agrees because she has information he wants on metahumans.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Since they're basically sent on a Suicide Mission against their will and feel a better opportunity to escape than being in a high-security prison cell, some members of the team naturally try to flee. The major problem is, they have Explosive Leashes in them.
  • Captain Boomerang and Slipknot are the first to try. It doesn't end well for the latter.
  • Harley Quinn too, as she's just waiting till the Joker comes to get her back with technology to neutralize her Explosive Leash, and she happily jumps on the occasion once he roars in with an helicopter and a storm of bullets. Then the helicopter gets shot down, forcing Harley to rejoin the Squad.
  • Everyone walks away when Flagg reveals that he allowed Enchantress to escape, and that their real objective is to protect Waller and cover up her involvement in the incident.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Enchantress is a nearly literal example, as her spirit was contained inside a figurine-shaped jar buried in a temple in the jungle. Once Dr. Moon opens it, her spirit is free to possess her. Her brother's spirit is kept in a similar can in the same temple.
• Shades of Conflict: Director David Ayer described the conflict in the movie as being "bad" versus "evil" — with comparatively redeeming qualities on the "bad" side.
• Shipped in Shackles: Killer Croc, considering his strength and penchant for cannibalism, is shipped to Task Force X in numerous restraints.
• Shirtless Scene: When the Joker tortures Harleen, he doesn't wear a shirt (this allows the viewers to get a good view of his body tattoos). In fact, even when he wears his signature suit jacket, he leaves his shirt unbuttoned to show his chest.
• Shoot the Dog: At the end, when Enchantress refuses to release June Moone, Rick Flag is forced to crush her heart. Fortunately, June survives.
• Short-Lived Aerial Escape: On three separate occasions, although the first time is arguably a Short-Lived Aerial Insertion, with a helicopter getting shot down while trying to get into the area. Amusingly enough, helicopters in this film only seem to get shot down when named characters are aboard.
• Shout-Out:
  • Harley's costume is inspired by◊ Debbie Harry.
  • Killer Croc is watching a TechN9ne music video in his cell at the end of the film.
  • The titular Suicide Squad are implanted with miniature Explosive Leashes in their necks in the vein of Escape from New York.
  • Harley Quinn runs into the bars of her cell, knocking herself out, in a similar way as Mallory Knox did.
  • Captain Boomerang carries around a stuffed pink unicorn doll he calls "pinkie".
  • Enchantress' costume and spell-casting dance when fully empowered appears inspired from Robot Maria as the "Whore of Babylon" scene.
• Shown Their Work: Deadshot mentions the numerous factors that must be taken into account when shooting at long range. Such as altitude, the wind and the coriolis effect.
• Skull for a Head: Invoked, but also subverted. From every distance but a close-up, the tattoos around El Diablo's mouth appear to be the standard Dia de los Muertos "skeleton teeth." Upon close-up, they're revealed to be Aztec war feathers.
• Slashed Throat: In a flashback, Katana kills a member of the Yakuza via slitting his throat with her sword.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Joker is featured in Harley's flashback scenes and has a subplot in the film itself about his efforts to get her back (which interfere with the mission), but overall has little screentime compared to him usually being the Big Bad of other films.
• Soul Jar: The Enchantress' heart is kept separate from her body. Its destruction will kill her.
• Spent Shells Shower: Seen when the SEAL team opens up with automatic weapons on the advancing horde of zombies. There is a close-up on the spent casings raining down around their feet.
• The Squad: Task Force X is this by design, and it's even in the team's nickname. Sure enough, there is a military leader trying to keep control (Flag), a bunch of red shirts who die to prove how serious the situation is (Flag's platoon), a sniper (Deadshot), explosion guy (El Diablo) etc.
• Stalker with a Crush: In the Extended Cut, Harley is shown pursuing Joker after he turns her down repeatedly.
• Stealth Pun:
  • When Rick Flag breaks his phone (thereby preventing him from detonating their nanite bombs) and tells the squad they're free to go, Captain Boomerang immediately bolts, but comes back shortly after, like a boomerang.
  • At the end of the film, Harley is seen reading a Harlequin romance novel.
• Stepford Smiler: Harley at least attempts this after Joker's hijacked chopper gets shot down, and while no-one buys it, they have the decency not to rub her face in it.
• The Stinger: A mid-credits version. Waller talks with Bruce Wayne and gives him classified files on Enchantress, Barry Allen and Arthur Curry, with him saying he is looking to make friends. She implies she knows he is Batman and he tells her to shut down her metahuman program, or he and his friends will do it for her.
• Story-Breaker Power: Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Katana, Slipknot, Rick Flag, and even the Joker's gang are more or less mere Badass Normals. Then you have Killer Croc who has Super-Toughness and Super-Strength, El Diablo can generate and control fire, and the Enchantress can cast Functional Magic; so Diablo is The Atoner turned pacifist who refuses to use his powers for most of the movie, and the Enchantress turns into the Big Bad very quickly, providing magical super-tough Mooks for Croc to beat up.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: June Moon, who is possessed by the spirit of an extra dimensional witch, gets messy black tendrils of long hair running down her head when the spirit takes over. She cleans up much more nicely once Enchantress gets her heart back.
• Suicide Mission: What Task Force X is for, and the other half of the team's nickname.
  Rick Flag: This is the deal: you're going somewhere very bad, to do something that'll get you killed.
• Sunshine Noir: Judging from the trailers, it seems to be the main aesthetic of the movie: dark, night-time atmosphere with splashes of saturated neon colours through scenery and costume elements.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: In a general sense averted in that the main events of the film take place in Midway City, home to Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the DC comics but who are not shown to exist in the DCEU at this point. In fact, the Squad is formed because Superman is dead. However, Batman, Flash and Wonder Woman are established heroes with Batman and Flash even showing up at different points in the story, and it's quite a news-worthy event but no-one besides the Squad is shown trying to approach the situation themselves. It depends on how far away the aforementioned superheroes were from the city and how long the event lasted before Task Force X solved the problem. While others may be trying to work on the same problem they are the ones who actually solve it. The Stinger shows that the Justice League is not operational yet.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Some members of the squad have unique confinements. El Diablo is kept in a sealed metal water tank, neutralizing any usefulness of his powers (it's shown that in another prison he incinerated an entire courtyard of inmates). Harley is kept in two layers of cages, with the inner layer being electrified just in case (she's later shown stabbing a guard with a pen when they tries to get her out, and it's said she's done similar things before). Killer Croc is shown in more of a dungeon or enclosed sewer than a regular cell, he has a small pool and fed through a manhole cover (there is another gate, but guards avoid it because Croc enjoys waiting in the water and snagging anyone who comes close).
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Harley tries escaping from Waller on a commandeered helicopter but leaving the others behind, so Waller orders it shot down with Harley on it. Then Waller tries escaping on another copter, also without taking along anyone else, and then that one is taken down with Waller on it.
• Taken During the Ending: After the squad completed their mission and is seny back in Belle Reve penitentiary, the Joker (who was presumed to be dead) breaks into the prison to rescue Harley.
• Tattoo as Character Type:
  • The Joker sports multiple tattoos on his body, all themed to his persona (i.e. a skull wearing a harlequin hat, a deck of playing cards, the word "damaged" on his forehead, etc.).
  • Harley Quinn has similar tattoos, but not as many, such as a playing card heart on her cheek.
  • El Diablo's skull tattoos speak towards his Latin American criminal backstory.
• Tattooed Crook: The Joker, Harley Quinn and El Diablo all have tattoos and were involved in many, many crimes before being drafted for Suicide Squad. The Joker, for instance, has "damaged" on his forehead.
• Team Title: Suicide Squad.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Most of the squad is being forced into helping the government with black ops missions, and generally distrust each other.
• The Teetotaler: When the Squad have a drink, Diablo insists on drinking water. This is likely due to alcohol being highly flammable and the nature of his powers.
• Teleport Spam: Enchantress can teleport pretty much anywhere, a skill she uses fairly liberally. She does this a lot during the Final Battle and dominates said battle.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In a scene at a bar late in the movie, Harley comments that "Normal is a setting on the dryer, it's not for people like us." It's suggested that nearly all members of the squad became villains because something set them apart from normal society and they figured there was no going back from that. Killer Croc specifically finds some pathos in how his deformities ensured he would never be treated well.
• That Man Is Dead: When Amanda Waller tries to convince Diablo to join the Squad, he refuses because he doesn't want to use his pyrokinetic power to kill people any more. In the Back Story, he had accidentally killed his wife and children when his wife threatened to leave him.
  Diablo: That ain't me.
  Waller: That wasn't you?
  Diablo: Nah, they say it's me, but that ain't me. That guy's gone. He's dead.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
  • A similar variation in Spanish is given by Diablo to Incubus before facing him down in full fire god mode:
    Diablo: It's on now, asshole!
  • It doesn't really work so well for Waller when she tells Enchantress "do your worst, bitch!" Enchantress does.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Killer Croc is really good at swimming and fighting underwater. Unfortunately, almost all of the mission takes place on dry land. However, during the battle against the Enchantress's brother, the team needs an explosive device to be detonated in an underwater tunnel to blow up the brother. Killer Croc actually insists on participating in this task because he realizes how useful he will be during it.
• Title Drop: Deadshot describes the group as "some kind of Suicide Squad" when learning of the expendable nature of the team.
• Token Evil Teammate: Among the crew of criminals, only two are treated with little to no noble qualities, Captain Boomerang and Slipknot. Slipknot is killed early on to prove the bomb is real, preventing any further development of his character. In contrast, every other member of the team seemed to find some inner peace after dealing with the main threat.
• Token Good Teammate:
  • Rick Flag, a government agent that's in the Suicide Squad to make sure the other members don't go out of control. However, it turns out he's just as morally dubious as the criminals, since he condones Amanda Waller murdering her entire support staff to cover up her incompetent handling of the Enchantress crisis.
    Flag: Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?
  • Likewise, Katana is Rick's bodyguard and the only volunteer member of the Squad.
  • Diablo also turns out to be one. A Reformed Criminal who's afraid of his own power after he accidentally killed his own family in rage, then voluntarily surrenders himself to the law and eventually performs a Heroic Sacrifice to help stop Incubus.
• Truer to the Text: The previous version of the Joker was Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, where they made the character's appearance with white skin, red lips and green hair a deliberate choice with make-up and hair dye along with contradictory stories of his Glasgow Smile in an effort to ground the film in reality instead of saying the traditional "fell into a tank of acid" did all those things. This film's Joker is suggested that his appearance is in part due to the tank of acid origin but only his white skin and hair, while his lips are a deliberate style choice. Harley ended up diving into a similar tank of chemical and her skin and hair was also bleached.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Moone, in her Enchantress form, at first appears covered in grime and dirt for no apparent reason. When she gets more powerful later, it somehow cleans her off.
• Unexplained Recovery: The Joker reappears without a scratch after appearing to be killed in an explosion. Amusingly enough, it's unclear if this is the result of the clear post-production problems and numerous deleted scenes the film suffered, or just a nod to how he's always been able to survive stuff like this despite ostensibly being a normal human.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: The team seems to only have prison uniforms and costumes/tactical gear. The Joker has at least half a dozen outfits. Almost all of them are outfits he's worn in the comics.
• Urban Ruins: The entirety of Midway City is destroyed by the Enchantress, and Waller is forced to rely on Batman to cover up her involvement in the catastrophe.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The subway station from which a Pillar of Light emerges, and where the Big Bad plots their Evil Plan, something Deadshot even lampshades.
  Deadshot: Let me guess, we're headed towards the swirling ring of trash in the sky?"
• Villain Episode: Suicide Squad is the first supervillain-led DC film adaptation released in theaters.
• Villain Has a Point: While Flagg tries to deny Deadshot's notions that his Black Ops work makes him Not So Different from himself, he is eventually forced to admit that Waller is as ruthless as any crime boss, and service to her ultimately no better than any of Deadshot's assassination contracts.
• Villainous Crush: Batman gets snogged by Harley Quinn while giving her the Kiss of Life. From the disgusted look on Batman's face, the feeling is entirely one-sided.
• Villainous Demotivator: Deadshot says that Flag's Rousing Speech could use some work. He prefers Waller's, but either way it's the same — do what we say or die.
• Villain Protagonist: Task Force X is mostly made up of Boxed Crooks, per the norm.
• Visual Pun:
  • While in prison, Harley Quinn is seen reading a Harlequin Romance Novel.
  • When being rounded up for the mission, Croc does a crocodile-like ambush when a guard comes close to his pool.
    Griggs [sigh] Was that the new guy?
• Wardens Are Evil: Captain Griggs, the closest thing Belle Reve has to a warden, is an asshole who enjoys abusing the prisoners and has a massive gambling problem that makes him an easy target for blackmail by the Joker.
• Was Once a Man: All of the Enchantress' mooks used to be regular people from Midway City that got transformed into Humanoid Abominations.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Most of the squad members have unique or personalized weapons they use.
  • Deadshot — Wrist-mounted pistols and a customized assault rifle.
  • Harley — Revolver with gold trim and "Love" and "Hate" on different chambers, graffiti'ed baseball bat.
  • Captain Boomerang — Boomerangs as both ranged weapons and sharpened for close combat.
  • Katana — A katana, the Soultaker.
  • Killer Croc — Bare hands.
  • Flag (and the Navy Seals) — Military rifle and pistol.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Slipknot only shows up once the Squad is assembled, and once the mission starts, he attempts to escape after Boomerang convinces him to; this, of course, leads to his head getting blown clean off before he can partake in any of the action.
• Wham Line
  • When Amanda Waller meets with Bruce Wayne in The Stinger, she makes it blatantly clear that she knows all about his little secret.
    Waller: You look tired. You should stop working nights.
  • Not to be outdone, Bruce comes back with one of his own, much more directly:
    Bruce: You should shut it down, or my friends and I will do it for you.
• What You Are in the Dark: A downplayed example, but Flag destroys the remote to their leashes, giving them full ability to cut and run, and they had long acknowledged that no matter what happens, they will not get any accolades for this. It's downplayed in that even if they had ran, they were dead anyways.
• Wild Card: Joker is described as being one for the team, even though he isn't actually on the team.
• Wolverine Publicity: Though the cast consists of largely unknown characters, Warner Bros. still made sure to include DC's most popular villain and a cameo by their most popular hero.
• Worldbuilding: As one might imagine, one purpose of the movie is to greatly expand DC's line of supervillains that have appeared on film, to complement Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice expanding the roster of live-action DC superheroes. In particular the film sets up the development of the Squad as a response to Superman's existence, reasoning that they need something to even the field. It also shows Batman in flashbacks to show him fighting crime is not as recent in that world as it seemed in Dawn of Justice.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Like in the comics, Joker isn't afraid to give Harley a merciless backhand slap, or torture her.
  • Batman also knocks Harley out with a quick punch to the face when she attacks him with a knife.
  • Slipknot punches a female FBI agent that's delivering him to Task Force X and an entire unit of soldiers.
  • Averted with Deadshot, who states that he has never shot a woman or child, at least until Enchantress. He also semi-jokingly threatens to throw down with Harley if she gets out of line.
• Yandere Couple: Unlike how their relationship is depicted in the comics, Harley Quinn and the Joker are portrayed here as being psychotically devoted to one another.
• You Can See That, Right?: After the team enters the room where the villains are casting a spectacular spell to destroy the world, Harley Quinn asks "Hey, everyone can see all this trippy magic stuff, right?" Colonel Flag says "Yeah, why?" Harley replies "I'm off my meds."
• Your Heart's Desire: At the final confrontation, Enchantress offers each member the chance to fulfill their deepest desires, but they slowly start rejecting it or at least in some cases, debating it.

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♫ Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters
To me... ♫

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