Nightmare Fuel / Harley Quinn (2019)

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The Joker, managing to make The Scarecrow horrifying without the need of his fear toxins.

Harley Quinn (2019) is a gory TV-MA adult animated series after all, so expect many of these moments.

General

• The Joker's henchmen are not only unflinchingly loyal to him, they also look disturbingly corpse-like. Given his manipulation of Harley and his penchant for disfiguring people for shits and giggles, the thought of working for this guy seems extra-scary.

Season 1

Til Death Do Us Part

• As much as the show runs on Bloody Hilarious, some of the gore is still a little much.
  • The Joker melting some of the businessmen in the opening with acid gas.
  • Frank the Plant barfing up three half-digested skeletons.
  • The Joker sends one of his goons to Ivy's apartment to read an 'apology' to Harley. It ends with the goon exploding.
  • Harley shoving a bomb into the mouth of one of the Joker's goons, which then explodes.

A High Bar

• Unlike her massacre last episode, Harley is easily taken out by the Penguin's umbrella. If Ivy hadn't shown up, she'd have been in real trouble.

So You Need a Crew?

• Maxie Zeus walks around with his junk hanging out half the time, and it is apparently so STD ridden that even Harley is Squicked out. And his charisma seems to be enough that many women sleep with him anyway.

Finding Mr. Right

• When Harley has Robin tied up over a pool with King Shark swimming around, the intent was to lightly scare him. But when Robin's nose bleeds and the blood drips into the water, King Shark smells it and goes way off-script into a feeding frenzy. Harley is unable to reel in him and Robin is utterly terrified and screams for his father (fortunately Batman bursts in to save the day). Whereas the Queen of Fables' massacre (see below) ran on Refuge in Audacity, King Shark's frenzy is one of the most legitimately harrowing scenes in the series.

Being Harley Quinn

• Sy Borgman enters Ivy's apartment, sees the crew passed out wearing shirts that say 'Suicide Squad', and thinks they're all dead. So he and an old flame of his try to cremate the 'bodies' in the pizza oven of an abandoned mall. The episode quickly turns into a race against time for our protagonists so they won't be burned alive without being able to do anything about it.
• The young Harleys conjured up to defend her brain are incredibly disturbing- they can crawl on the walls and ceiling, are basically indestructible, have glowing orange eyes, and their jaws can extend outward like some kind of xenomorph.

You're a Damn Good Cop Jim Gordon

• After tricking the cops out of the police station, there's a phone left off the cradle:
  Woman's voice (terrified whispering): Hello? My husband's been murdered and the killer's still in the hou... [Harley hangs up the phone]
• Batman almost letting Harley fall to her death inside the Batcave in order to protect his secret identity. Batman.

The Line

• In a show that's otherwise Bloody Hilarious, the Queen of Fables' rampages in "The Line" really stand out as being too gruesome to even be considered a case of Crossing the Line Twice, somehow made even more disturbing by how casually she treats them. You honestly can't blame Harley and her crew for reacting in complete horror.

LODRSVP

• Aquaman's ability to communicate with fish does not sound so nice when you realize he gets to hear them suffer and panic when Harley makes him break a water tank...

A Seat at the Table

• The Joker going out of his way to play mind games with Harley, treating her like an equal member of the Legion and making her think they could have a relationship again... just so he could push her out of his helicopter to her (near) death. And his motives seem threefold- getting back at her for shutting down his TV tower idea, making it so that he can say he was the one who broke up with her, and using her as a distraction for Batman once more. By the end of the episode, Harley is so broken that the entire next episode is her dealing with it.
• Bane borrows Harley's crew to blow up a smoothie joint. Except he gets impatient and sets off the bomb early... while King Shark is still inside. The poor guy's dorsal fin is blown clean off, and you almost think he might die. Worse, it would've been All for Nothing, since Bane's target wasn't even in the smoothie shop.

Bensonhurst

• Both of Harley's parents dropping their facade and outright trying to kill her for a bounty.
• The Scarecrow's presence in this episode came off as more threatening than his usual demeanor, so much so that he lives up to his name.
• The end of the episode shows that Joshua, the Penguin's nephew who previously seemed harmless, took out the bounty on Harley as revenge for her ruining his Bar Mitzvah. Gotham might just have a new villain on its hands...

Harley Quinn Highway

• An elderly man drives up to the Scarecrow's facility and asks for directions. The guards immediately fill him with lead.
• Sy Borgman transforming into a sedan is horrifying in-universe and out.
• The Scarecrow using Ivy's pheromones to upgrade his fear toxin. It can affect even those who are otherwise immune to poisons. And when it gets mixed into Gotham's water supply, it causes all the plants in the city to mutate into man-eating monsters.
• Ivy's failed attempt to escape, where after killing the guards watching her, she slowly gets weaker. She is eventually stopped and the Scarecrow hits her with an injection, which leaves her so weak that when she tries to strangle him, he doesn't even react before she passes out.
• The inside of Ivy's mind is even more horrific than Harley's. The trees in her mind are alive, but only exist to be eaten by a sentient wood-chipper that looks like it came out of FernGully: The Last Rainforest. The background is full of giant shifting eyes and Ivy's memories of her father take a turn for the surreal as he transforms into a gigantic dark gateway to Hell.

The Final Joke

• Among the Joker’s acts as the new ruler of Gotham is making a necklace from King Shark’s teeth, as well as enforcing a law that requires all of Gotham’s citizens to laugh at anything he says, otherwise a firing squad will show up and promptly execute anyone who doesn’t laugh.
  • Hell, almost all of the "punishments" he comes up with for Harley's crew are horrifying—only Psycho gets out relatively scot-free.
    • Ivy is killed with a spear to the chest.
    • As stated above, he graphically pulls out King Shark's teeth and wears them as a necklace, all while King is bound, bruised, and helpless in a chair.
    • He pushes Sy Borgman—an elderly, disabled man—down an immensely long spiral staircase.
    • Finally, he turns Clayface on a giant pottery wheel, forcably molding his body until the poor guy can't even keep his shape and is reduced to a pile of goo with a face on it.
• The Joker graphically melting the Scarecrow's head with acid just because the Scarecrow unceremoniously unmasked Batman. You get to see the Scarecrow's head get reduced to nothing but a skull before he falls over, said skull completely shattering into a bloody heap upon impact.
  • It's even worse than shattering; it looks like the skull exploded. Like the acid superheated his brain.
• The Joker's last gambit, which uses Harley's own emotional growth as a weapon against her. For coming so far as a person, all it ends up doing is putting her right back in the clown suit she started in. And even if she had refused, it would have lead to the death of all her friends and broken her completely. It truly cements just what an utter bastard this version of the Joker is.

Season 2

New Gotham

• We see more of the results of New Gotham, and it's not pretty.
• While trying their darndest to prevent Harley from being rescued from The Penguin, several of his goons get hit with the massive block of ice containing her frozen body. The results aren't pretty.
• The Penguin is killed after Harley impales her bat through his neck. Even her teammates are taken aback by the sight.
• Harley rejects the other villains, and in response she encased in ice by Mr. Freeze. While frozen we hear the vague sounds of the other villains taunting her for her mistake. Aside from remarks by Bane, none of this is played for comedy.

Riddle U

• The Riddler forces students to run in giant hamster wheels in order to power the city. Two of them die from exhaustion, and he nonchalantly replaces them.
• King Shark and Psycho skewer one of Two-Faces's goons with a modified truck. He turns out to still be alive before his head is bashed in by Bane goons.

Batman's Back, Man

• After being treated as only a doofus and a gag since the series began, this episode reminds everyone that somebody Bane's size — and boosted with chemicals — is really dangerous.
• Bane's beatdown of Batman. Even with a suit of Powered Armor, Bane is too strong. Batman is beaten up so badly that he's bleeding even with the suit, with it eventually breaking down. Then there is Bane deciding to "break the Bat." Rather than breaking his back, he hits Batman's knees against a metal structure so hard that blood bursts out from inside the suit.

All The Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues

• The Joker taunting Batman about him killing Jason Todd which in turn causes Batman to beat him brutally.
  • The Joker is seen bruised and bloody, with his blood splattered all over the window. We see Harvey smirking through it, with half the blood covering his face, giving a rather creepy look.
• We saw that Harvey Dent was entirely willing to shoot through a kidnap victim (Harley) for the sake of maintaining his votes. While it's not any better that he became a supervillain, the thought of what'd happen if a Harvey Dent this uninhibited never became Two-Face and ran for higher office is... unsettling, to say the least.
• The ending implies that Dr. Psycho may or may not have caused the currently-normal Joker's old personality to subconsciously resurface, but either way, it's followed by some Nightmare Retardant when he coughs in the middle of a maniacal-sounding laugh and calms back down.
  • What could happen to his new girlfriend and her two kids if the Joker's personality returns. The picture of the kids smiling with tomato sauce on their faces adds to the dread.

Inner (Para) Demons

• The Parademons Curb-Stomp Battle of Jim Gordon and the people he assembled to fight Harley. We see them rip tanks to pieces, along with people. The already ravaged Gotham City is even more ravaged by their attack. Aside from Dr. Psycho Harley's crew is horrified by it, with Ivy even convincing Harley herself that she doesn't want this.
  • Ivy wasn't really concerned about the genocide being commited, just that Harley was doing it for no purpose... which in itself is quite scary, and a good reminder that even if the show treats them humorously and in a sympathetic way, these are all evil people.
• Gordon wasn't even remotely interested in taking Harley or anyone else alive. Considering how, shall we say, unwell he is in this continuity, imagine him playing judge, jury and executioner.

Dye Hard

• Dr. Psycho's Face–Heel Turn gives a true showcase of just how powerful a scorned telepath can be with amplified brainwaves. Not only does he instantly assume control over the Parademon army, but he also manages to brainwash Clayface and King Shark into mindlessly attacking their boss, even forming a dome around Wayne Tower explicitly to keep Harley from escaping his wrath.
• The Joker's brief lapses back into insanity throughout the episode. From his mere laughter seeming like a trigger Harley has to quash, to his maddened cackling as he realizes he's gouged someone's eye out with a pencil, and then his sinister greeting to Gordon once he's been cuffed up.
  Joker: Gordo? *dark chuckle* Good to see you, buddy.
• The end bringing about the worst possible scenario for Harley, as she needs to bring the Justice League back to stop Dr. Psycho's Parademon army. The only one who knows their location, however, is the Joker... the real Joker. Who Harley aims to bring back by pushing the normalized Joker back into another vat of acid.
  Harley: I'll be seeing ya soon, Mistah J.

Lovers' Quarrel

• King Shark's worst memory turns out to be murdering his younger brother in a blood frenzy. Even Dr. Psycho is shocked by it.

Season 3

There's No Ivy in Team

• One of the test results of Ivy's Edin plan brings a small daisy to life, before it starts Hulking Out until its muscular body becomes too much to handle and explodes.
• During their time in the escape room, Harley accidentally sets off one of many potential traps Riddler set up, instantly killing the returning customer by impaling him on the wall.

The 83rd Annual Villy Awards

• Joker's introductory reel before he arrives at the ceremony has him beating "Robin" (presumably Jason Todd) to death with a crowbar.
• Billy Bob Thornton mistakes the locked green room in Catwoman's penthouse for the bathroom, and is promptly eaten by the tiger locked in there. All that is left of the actor is his bloody, severed head.

Another Sharkley Adventure

• King Shark and his recently-crowned brother Prince are suddenly falling out with each other. As the latter points out, he got tired of the whole "responsible sibling" role while the former enjoyed the surface life. Just as Prince decides to close the deal with Ocean Master (which involves selling out the Shark Kingdom), King doesn't take this betrayal lightly - and attacks him. The result? He kills his last remaining brother just like the others - in a frenzy. By the time King realizes what he has done, it's already too late: Prince dies in his arms.
  King Shark (tearfully): I didn't want this.

Batman Begins Forever

• Bruce’s Mental World starts off as a Black Bug Room and keeps getting worse - initially, Harley can't access any of his memories because it's just the night his parents died playing on a loop. Then, when she tries to break it to get access to his other memories, it doesn't work. Knock the gun out of Joe Chill’s hand? It flies right back. Cut off his arm? It grows back, gun and all. Then when she and Kid!Bruce manage to get away, Joe keeps following them to kill them and any other person inside Bruce’s mind he comes across, including mental versions of Joker and Harley from before they broke up and nothing stops him. Eventually, he takes off his mask to reveal an adult Bruce who feels so guilty over his parents' deaths he's willing to mentally torture himself by killing them forever and destroying everything else in Bruce’s Mental World if he can't.
  • And before taking off the mask, this depiction of Joe Chill is one of the creepiest takes on the character ever, with wide open unblinking eyes and a permanent toothy Slasher Smile. Even if it's just Bruce's perception of Chill being warped by the trauma, it's still incredibly unsettling.
  • A more unnerving aspect of this is that this is called, by Dr Psycho, a "Reverse Repressed Memory", a memory that literally represses all of the others in his mind, the only thing that is ever on his mind. And by all accounts, this is Batman's default state, replaying that same night in his head over and over again for the last 30 years. It is no longer a question of why Batman has gone a bit crazy, but rather how he managed to avoid doing so sooner.
• Yet another chilling reminder that although they are the show's protagonists, Harley's group (with the exception of Harley herself and maybe King Shark^note  we don't know how he would have reacted since he did not come along into Bruce's mind in this episode ) are not good people. Despite witnessing the traumatic deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne again and again, with Bruce traumatized as a result, they simply do not care. Clayface just wants to know how Thomas "felt" as he died for an inside scoop into his head to help Clayface act out a role in a movie.^note Never mind that this is a memory, and not even one belonging to the man he's asking. How he expected this to work is anyone's guess. Psycho becomes extremely annoyed after seeing the Waynes die over and over. Ivy is the worst one of all, even if she's the most justified: Bruce's kidnapping and experimenting on Frank has left her completely unsympathetic to him, and she has no problems saying so.
• The reason Bruce took Frank? In the beginning it was to put a stop to Ivy's plan since, you know, she's a villain out to do harm, which his mental self bluntly points out to Harley. But later this perversely morphs to enhancing Frank's abilities to affect humans and bring back Bruce's parents, becoming that desperate to escape his trauma. He actually succeeds at bringing back Thomas and Martha at the end of the episode, but also causing a zombie uprising in the cemetery.
• In the end, this episode ends up deconstructing the entire concept of Batman. Bruce always believed that avoiding becoming like the villains he fights means not stooping to their level and not taking lives at any cost. But not all villains are simply in it For the Evulz like the Joker. Many of them have awful backstories just as bad or even worse than Bruce's; they've all got unanswered trauma just like him that corrupted them from the inside-out, and it was this trauma manifesting in the worst way that drove them to amoral acts. Now that time has come for Bruce — he's been in the same boat as the villains all along, even before he became Batman, and he doesn't even realize it.

Season 4

The First Person to Come Back From a Business Conference Without Chlamydia

• Joker's act to officially return to villainy: Blowing up a gardener trying to start his mower, for no other reason than because he bored him in a meeting. After the explosion, Joker watches on and laughs in true Joker fashion, with the flames reflecting in his pupils.

Metamorphosis

• Joker announces to his family that he is going back into villainy, and they all disturbingly support him every step of the way, revealing they’re as fucked up as he is, quickly devolving into a cacophony of maniacal laughter.
  • To top this off? the ending reveals Joker was the one who killed Nightwing!
• The Jons, Lex Luthor's personal yes-men and PR team that he pushed onto Ivy, are revealed to be some kind of replicating symbiotic being. When the Jons are pushed too far? They merge into a gigantic monstrosity that through the efforts of the Natural Disasters to take it down? Takes on a hideous, melted form.
• The very, very end of the episode, when Harley sees another version of herself walking around in the crowd. Is she dreaming again? What the hell is going on?!

Potato Based Cloning Incident

• It's revealed that Harley was the one responsible for killing Nightwing during one of her bouts of sleepwalking. The murder itself is rather unsettling, as Harley strangles Nightwing to death with a friendship bracelet she made while repeatedly saying "I'm a good guy" in an unnervingly calm way.
• It's confirmed; neither Harley nor Joker can escape their true natures as crazy killers. But while Joker gleefully embraces being himself again, Harley discovers that no matter how much she doesn't want it anymore, she has no control over her own inner impulses for senseless violence and killing.

Killer's Block

• Nightwing being resurrected in the Lazarus Pit. At first, he makes unsettling zombie-like noises. After regaining his sentience, he utters:
  Where the fuck is Harley Quinn?