DC announced they were girlfriends on Twitter. Before that, in comics, all attraction between them was only subtext.
5. The character was based on Arleen Sorkin’s performance in Days of Our Lives.
She wore a jester costume in a joke fantasy sequence that played on The Princess Bride, and The Animated Series used this as inspiration for Harley Quinn.
6. World War II had a real-life suicide squad.
Yes, it’s really been done, making an expendable unit out of criminals … except when Germany did it, the unit ended up committing a bunch of war crimes even worse than what the regular Nazis did.
7. Superman was going to be the villain of The Suicide Squad.
8. She gained so much mainstream fame thanks to the Arkham video games.
The tinkering they did to her design there led to her new look when DC rebooted their characters.
9. Then fans revolted over Harley Quinn being too sexy.
Some people got so angry over her 2011 redesign, they filmed themselves threatening the writer, then sent the videos to him.
10. Harley fighting a giant starfish like in The Suicide Squad has a parallel from nature.
The harlequin shrimp dines exclusively on starfish. It keeps its prey alive by force-feeding it, as it slowly eats it alive limb-by-limb.
Related: Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy Are Now Married in DC’s ‘Injustice’ Comic
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