"Look, if the end result of this is just that everyone is super hоrny and they all go and have amazing consensual sеx on Valentine's Day, then I really don't see the problem."
— Harley
Couples all over the DC Universe are celebrating Valentine's day. Harley tries to throw Ivy the best Valentine's she's ever had. Clayface gets catfished and gets enamored with his own bottom half. A lonely and despondent Bane gets roped into assisting a dominatrix before accidentally wreaking havoc. These plotlines converge on a shirtless poetry reading by Ted Lasso's sexiest South Londoner, Brett Goldstein.
Tropes:
- Adam Westing: So reads the billboard for Brett Goldstein's poetry reading: "Brett Goldstein reads the works of Lord Byron shirtless while polishing his trophy." Goldstein voices himself in the episode.
- Alone Among the Couples: Bane is upset because he's alone on Valentine's Day, unlike the rest of the cast. He briefly tries to third-wheel Clock King and Riddler's date.
- Aroused by Their Voice: An already horny Bane is extremely turned on by Brett Goldstein's voice.Bane: That voice! A lower-middle-class South London accent that says he's not afraid of hard labor in the workplace or in bed. I must have him!
- Asshole Victim: Harley threatened an oil executive to play along with her grand romantic gesture and pretend to be the villain that points a gun at her head. This ends with him killed by Ivy.
- Asteroids Monster: Clayface gets bisected at the waist by a catfishing Captain Boomerang and like the last time he was dismembered, his severed body part comes to independent life. Unlike last time, it's closer to a direct copy of the original and is just as independent.
- As You Know: Subverted and parodied with Bane's talk with Riddler about how reckless disregard of language turns him off. Despite Bane talking about the subject in a way that suggests that this is something commonly known about him, Riddler questions if anyone actually knows this about Bane, implying that this detail not only is in reality not that well known as much as Bane made it out to be, but also that not even Riddler himself knew about it prior to Bane bringing it up. Bane's follow-up response of "You do now" to Riddler's question then confirms this to be the case.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Bane attempts to use a magic potion to enlarge his penis, but because he's technically on HGH there's a bad reaction that enlarges him into a giant. He then gets hit by Ivy's magically charged pheromones which enhances his libido to the point he mindlessly humps buildings into rubble, and becomes hell-bent on having sex with Brett Goldstein.Harley: He's a giant fucking kaiju!
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Harley goes to Diana's apartment disguised as an Amazon claiming that men are pillaging Themyscira. This is to get her to leave while also distracting her enough she doesn't notice Harley pickpocket the Lasso of Truth off of her.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: After everything is said and done, Ivy confesses to Harley what her best Valentine's Day was. It was back when Harley was still Dr. Harleen Quinzel, and Ivy was incarcerated in Arkham. Harley had stolen a chocolate milk from the commissary to gift to Ivy in her cell, and talked with Ivy about the plot of Shrek 2. Ivy enjoyed it because it was the first time someone treated her like a person.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Bane assists a dominatrix in entertaining a client with a penis size-related humiliation kink. Although Betty invites him over, he becomes insecure about his own penis size, especially when Betty assures him that he's certainly packing. Attempting to enlarge his dick then goes awry...
- Boom, Headshot!: Harley and Ivy's waiter is shot in the head by arriving gangsters. His blood gets on the women, to their disgust.
- Carpet of Virility: Brett Goldstein has a thick carpet of chest hair to emphasize his rugged attractiveness.
- Casting Gag: Hawkman and Hawkgirl are voiced by Tyler James Williams and Quinta Brunson, who play love interests on Abbott Elementary (which is executive produced by this show's creators, Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker).
- Celebrity Paradox: Etrigan's spell to turn Harley into a one-time Sex God directly invokes Christopher Meloni. One must wonder who voices Jim Gordon...
- Chekhov's Gun: Bane has an unsuccessful dating profile full of his turn-offs that he explains to Riddler in the beginning of the special. This comes into play in the climax (harhar) when Harley plans to reference it in an attempt to break him out of his lustful rampage.
- Confession Cam: Multiple DC couples explain their love stories this way.
- Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction: There are multiple unexpected interactions between phlebotinum of scientific and magical origin.
- The spell Harley used to give Ivy the best orgasm of her life causes her to unleash a burst of potent pheromones that spreads across multiple city blocks. Everyone it affects becomes so aroused they have passionate sex with the nearest person.
- Bane attempts to use a penis enlarging potion but because he's on venom, an apparent form of HGH, the potion causes his entire body to vastly enlarge with it.
- Combine the two above and you get an incredibly horny, musclebound giant mindlessly humping buildings to the ground.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Hawkman and Hawkwoman both met in one of their past lives as royalty in Ancient Egypt, where Hawkman decided to marry Hawkwoman on sight in the marketplace. Because it was Ancient Egypt, this was an actual binding decision that Hawkwoman could not refuse, soon marrying him after two weeks. They still loved each other deeply for forty happy years.
- Demoted to Extra: King Shark only appears briefly in a montage of other Gotham couples.
- Destructo-Nookie:
- When affected by Harley's spell, Ivy passionately makes out with her as she carries them both to the bedroom using vines. They knock over a few things along the way, including a candle which starts a small fire in Catwoman's apartment. Ultimately downplayed as the damage is minor and more from the accidental fallout.
- Exaggerated when a giant-sized Bane is rampaging around Gotham, humping buildings until they collapse. He demolishes a row of high rises in quick succession while making a beeline towards Brett Goldstein.
- Dominatrix: An actual one named Betty mistakes Bane for a fellow professional in the business, but he plays along for the chance of a Valentine's date with her. Soon they're both attracted to one another for real.
- Evil Lawyer Joke: Killer Croc managed to "enchant" Enchantress with one when they first met. She asked him if he had seen any spawns of Satan running through the dermatologist's office they were in (she had just summoned them and they got away), and he responded by pointing her towards the law firm next door. Croc admits it was low-hanging fruit, but Enchantress found it funny anyway.
- Extreme Omnisexual: Due to his recently acquired giant size, Bane inhales a proportionately larger dose of Ivy's pheromones, making him so insatiably horny that he uncontrollably humps everything in sight, which at his size is buildings.
- Flipping the Bird: Ivy goes for the double meaning by tossing an evil CEO into his helicopter's blades and then flipping the bird at him. She then has to explain that whirlybird is another term for helicopter.
- Gag Penis: Bane swears his penis is decently large, it just looks small on the rest of him. The results of a penis enlarging potion that go wrong because he's on Venom turns him into a giant, with his penis now censored by shadow and scenery as he demolishes buildings trying to have sex with them. At the end, he's seen using the shipping container trailer of a freight truck as a condom of sorts to censor it.
- Geeky Turn-On: Bane is turned off by bad grammar, and is inversely charmed when Betty uses a grammatically correct pick-up line.
- Gone Horribly Right: Harley's attempt to give the best Valentine's Day ever to Ivy ends up causing her pheromones to spread all over the city. This causes every living person and animal to become perpetually horny and want to copulate with the nearest anything nearby. Harley argues that all things considered this isn't that bad, which Ivy concedes to before a giant-sized Bane shows up, also horned up by Ivy's pheromones and humping buildings until they collapse into rubble. This gets Ivy's beloved restaurant, Mama Macaroni's, destroyed.
- Grammar Nazi: Bane turns out to be this, getting enraged and turned off by the improper use of "anyways" and "begs the question."
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Harley pulls one off in spite of Ivy telling her she wants a low-key Valentine's Day. She managed to enjoy it in spite of herself, but calling it "great" instead of the best causes Harley to obsess over doing another one to get her to call it the best. Deconstructed, when this is shown to be a holdover from her relationship with the Joker, and how it leads to her ignoring what Ivy actually wants as a partner different from him.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Clayface gets bisected at the waist by a catfishing Captain Boomerang. He survives, but his lower half comes to life. He spends the rest of the episode interacting with himself like this until the climax.
- Helicopter Blender: Ivy uses her vines to lift up an evil CEO's helicopter and blend him with it, which beheads him and chops his body up into pieces.
- Heroic Bystander: When his reading at Gotham Stadium gets crashed, Brett Goldstein literally leaps into action to avoid Bane's grasp as he directs other civilians to evacuate as quickly as possible.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: It's uncertain how Bane expects sex with Brett Goldstein to work given his current immense size, but he's also not in his right mind. After his insatiable lust is abated, Betty shows up and is still interested in spending time with him, even as he remains giant-sized. Harley lampshades to Ivy that it doesn't seem like a physically feasible relationship.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Harley gets magically enhanced by Etrigan to give Ivy a very loud and satisfying orgasm, which then spreads to everyone in Gotham City.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: Harley takes Ivy out to a dinner at Mama Macaroni's where they're "spontaneously" served an experimental dish that combines Ivy's three favorite meals into one. She reacts with sheer joy.
- Insecure Love Interest: Harley becomes obsessed with giving Ivy the best Valentine's Day ever and decides to keep going with a second grand romantic gestures because she's unsatisfied Ivy called what she pulled off "great" instead of "the best".
- Joke of the Butt: Clayface ends up splitting in two, with his bottom half essentially becoming a talking butt.
- Kick the Dog: Captain Boomerang is catfishing people on Valentine's Day to mug them at meet-ups, pulling it off against a Super Gullible Clayface.
- The Lost Lenore:
- Diana is first shown in the episode crying over a picture of her and Steve Trevor.
- Played for laughs when Clayface's two halves, which fell in love with each other, get smushed back together. This leaves the physically whole Clayface emotionally devastated until Ivy gives him a Rousing Speech.
- Love Is in the Air: Ivy's magically enhanced orgasm causes her to unleash a massive burst of pheromones across Gotham that renders everyone helplessly horny and having sex with the nearest person. Ivy can't find a fault with it when Harley points out no one is getting hurt, until they see a giant Bane humping buildings into rubble.
- Magic Pants: While very much averted with the pants, Bane's mask and tubes grow with him when he became a giant.
- Mr. Fanservice: Brett Goldstein is at Gotham Stadium for Valentine's Day, doing a reading of the works of Lord Byron while shirtless with a Carpet of Virility and polishing his trophy.
- Mundane Utility: Etrigan uses his magical hellfire powers to give Harley and Ivy a romantic firework show.
- Mythology Gag:
- When told not to hold back with Betty, a confused Bane replies, "It would be extremely painful...for you," a line Bane said in The Dark Knight Rises.
- Enchantress' design is lifted from her appearance in Suicide Squad (2016).
- Harley has done a Bavarian Fire Drill on Diana before and stolen her lasso more than once in both comics and animation.
- Diana does the magic spin made famous by Lynda Carter's portrayal of Diana, which gets included at least once with every animated version of her.
- Bane turning gigantic happened prior in Batman Unlimited: Mechs Vs. Mutants, although in that case it was through the use of a mutagenic formula created by Mr. Freeze.
- Never My Fault: Downplayed when Harley refuses for the moment to accept fault for her actions unwittingly causing mass chaos in Gotham. She instead focuses her efforts on attempting to mitigate the damage. Ivy concedes that at least she's self aware about it.
- Pink Is Erotic: Poison Ivy causes Love Is in the Air, which is represented by a pink blast of pheromones, pink flower petals falling everywhere, and victims' eyes flashing pink before they start making out with whoever is next to them.
- Pixellation: The very brief frames that Bane's penis isn't being blocked from view, it's being censored with pixels.
- Power Perversion Potential: Most of the business Etrigan's magic shop does is in various sex spells, such that he accurately predicts Harley is there for an awesome orgasm spell and Bane wants a bigger penis.
- Questionable Consent:
- Although Harley calls it consensual and unproblematic, the special probably gets the qualifier in its title from the fact that a bunch of people are aroused into having sex with the nearest person by an unwitting burst of Ivy's pheromones across multiple blocks. Under their influence, Bane says he can't control himself and is only "half" consciously humping everything in sight.
- Clayface lampshades that Harley's proposal, for him to disguise himself as a giant Brett Goldstein and essentially reverse seduce Bane, is problematic on multiple levels. This is slightly more dubious. Bane is Not Himself due to Ivy's pheromones, and needs to be brought back for his senses before he likely rapes Brett. Since Clayface is not trying to have sex with him, it's more ethical than committing rape by deception. At the same time, this also puts Clayface at risk of Bane trying to have sex with him if it doesn't work.
- Race Lift: Hawkman is black here, as he was in Black Adam (2022). Hawkgirl (Hawkwoman?) is Ambiguously Brown.
- Reincarnation Romance: Hawkman and Hawkwoman are introduced in this special and they have their usual backstory of being lovers from Ancient Egypt who reincarnate and fall in love all over again through the ages.
- Scenery Censor: During the nude scenes, many, many things get hidden away by the scenery — but only just barely.
- All the naughty bits in Ivy and Harley's sex scene are tactfully covered by flowers.
- A giant, nude, and aroused Bane stands with a billboard advertising hotdogs in front of his crotch. Several other elements of the scenery cover his crotch as he rampages. Hilariously enough, one scene obscures his butt even though it's shown completely uncovered in other shots.
- Screw Yourself: Clayface almost literally shits where he eats when his sentient bottom half (a talking butt) falls in love with his top half (a talking torso).
- Serious Business: The recipe for the "La-Zeat Balls" being stolen is treated by Ivy as a serious situation, because she considers it too delicious to be in the wrong hands.
- Sex God: Temporarily invoked. Etrigan has a spell to make the "next person you bed feel divine". With it, Harley gives Ivy the best orgasm of her life, which in turn causes chaos across Gotham.
- Shadow Discretion Shot: There are two shots focusing on the shadow of Bane's penis. One is it looming over a screaming citizen and another is it deflating before Harley and Ivy after Clayface successfully turns him off.
- Shout-Out:
- Numerous romantic couples — both heroes and villains — give interviews about how they first met in the manner of the interviewed couples in When Harry Met Sally... The final couple are Harley and Ivy who Break the Fourth Wall and address the episode's viewers.
- Etrigan's spell for Harley calls on Beyoncé, George Clooney, Christopher Meloni, and Zendaya.
- Clayface disguised as a giant Brett Goldstein paraphrases lines from WandaVision, replacing grief with the word horny. Bane is completely baffled by the Non Sequitur.
- When preparing to binge TV on Valentine's Day, Ivy suggests that she and Harley watch one of the "fine" HBOMax shows, of which Harley Quinn is one.
- Ivy reveals that the best Valentine's Day she ever had was when Harley visited her prison cell in Arkham and recapped the entire plot of Shrek 2 for her. At the end of the special, Harley offers to recap Shrek the Third for the audience, but Ivy cuts her off.
- Side Effects Include...: Etrigan gives Bane a magic potion to enlarge his penis. Bane skims through the "do not take"ifs like being pregnant or having kidney problems and hastily applies it. When it gives him an intense burning sensation, only then does he realize that the bottom item says not to take if on HGH...which he is, being on Venom. It turns him into a giant.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Spoofed when Clayface gets divided into two halves that fall in love to due to Ivy's pheromones. Unfortunately, they can never touch because then they'd immediately meld back together. Tragically, they get smushed back together by Bane's Giant Foot of Stomping, leaving Clayface devastated.
- Take That!:
- Darkseid is one of the couples interviewed throughout the episode, partnered with Melania Trump. They met at the Republican National Convention where he was a guest speaker, locking eyes across the room where he fell in Love at First Sight and demanded she be his queen or else be destroyed. She in turn demanded his last three bank statements.
- While looking through Bane's dating profile, Harley and Ivy call Bane a monster when they see that he likes the later seasons of The Office (US). Ivy also says that she will kill Bane if she finds out that he liked the series finale of Dexter.
- Teeny Weenie: Bane is insecure about the size of his penis, but he asserts that it's average size and that he himself is so big that proportionately it looks tiny. Still, he seeks a magical solution from Etrigan to pump himself up.
- That Came Out Wrong: Harley cheers that she'll give Ivy a great VD, before lampshading the phrasing (since VD can also be short for venereal disease).
- Valentine's Day Special: Billed as a "Valentine's Day Special", this episode sees various characters celebrating St. Valentine's day.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Ivy calls out Harley's actions for the chaos they cause, especially since she didn't listen to Ivy's request for a more low-key Valentine's Day after Ivy already went along with the previous romantic Zany Scheme Harley planned anyway.
