Tyla's argument with Bloodsport. She reveals she got caught shoplifting and is annoyed her dad advises her to be smarter about stealing. They start screaming "Fuck you!" at each other. After a bit, Tyla's facade cracks. She begs for his help because her court date is coming up and Amanda has her sights on Tyla. Doubles as heartwarming that she and Bloodsport admit he's a terrible parent, but he would do anything for her.
At first, Bloodsport tries to bluff Amanda Waller when she holds his daughter hostage, saying a year of juvie might be good for his kid. She threatens to send Tyla to his prison if she's tried as an adult, and she'll probably die as a sixteen-year-old inmate. Bloodsport nearly kills Amanda with a pen, but she stands firm, establishing that even if she dies, her team will carry out the threat. He backs off, with a look of fatherly concern for Tyla.
While recruiting Polka Dot Man, Calendar Man walks by and calls him a pussy. While a childish insult the pain on Abner's face is clear that it cut deep.
Though indisputably unhinged by his experiences, Abner Krill otherwise seems to be just a sensitive, unhappy guy. His bleak worldview, literally hoping for death, is played for black comedy up until it stops being funny. (And then comes back around to being funny, often.)
The Mission Briefing, in which Amanda Waller explains the situation in Corto Maltese. The country's previous rulers, the Herrera family, were publicly hanged after General Luna and Major General Suarez took control of the government. Keep in mind, three of the family members were just children. We're given disturbing footage of the family's hanged corpses after their execution, and Cleo and Abner are rightfully unsettled by it. Granted, after we learn what exactly Project Starfish entailed, we lose any pity we would have felt towards the adults.
Harley killing Luna was a well-deserved fate for him since he was fine with hurting women and children, but she begins breaking down as she tells the dying Luna that she is used to men like him giving off red flags. Harley likes dangerous men, to her detriment, and she doesn't seem to stop falling into that pit.
Harley: I know, I know. I know what you're trying to say. "Harley, why not just leave?!" And I'd say, "Why are you screaming at me?! I'm not deaf! I'm standing right here!" And then I'd say, "When your taste in men is as bad as mine, they don't just go away quietly. They slash your tires and they kill your dogs and tell you that the music you like ain't real music at all." And all the cruelty... tears you apart after a while.
As this likely takes place after Birds of Prey (2020), even after her emancipation, Harley is still haunted by her break-up and the implication that her exes (including the Joker) never left her alone.
Polka Dot Man's backstory: his mother experimented on him and his siblings in the hopes that they would become superheroes. He survived. Most of his siblings didn't. This trauma has led to him seeing his mother everywhere.
Ratcatcher telling the Squad about how her father was a heroin addict and eventually overdosed.
Bloodsport promises Cleo he's getting her out of this mission alive, seeing much of Tyla in her. She promises to do the same for him, since he reminds her of her dad.
Ratcatcher suffers a minor Broken Pedestal moment when she hears how Starro was intended to be used by the Government as a pet. The parallels with her father and his work are too close for her to like it.
Even though Harley proves that she is able to handle being tortured, there is something sad about her blissfully singing 'I Ain't Got Nobody' all while being electrocuted for information all backed by saddening Background Music. Along with the lyrics of the song she is singing to, it shows that Harley is still a troubled woman and states that she is still alone after nearly killed on the beach and previous break-ups. It may nearly come across as Stepford Smiler.
Harley's reaction when she sees Flag and a team she's never seen before attempt to break into the president's manor. She asks what they're doing, and Flag says with irritation they came to rescue her. At first, Harley is stunned, and she offers to go back in and let them enact the plan. Then Flag hugs her, and she returns it. You can see her showing vulnerability after losing her former friends, being seduced, and almost killed.
Grieves has a stunning reveal: it wasn't the Herreras who got their hands on Starro. American astronauts did, and the government delivered the alien to Corto Maltese to learn how to control it. Waller's real intention wasn't to stop Starro, but to make sure the evidence was razed to the ground. Peacemaker reveals his extra mission was to make sure of that.
Flag isn't even surprised that Peacemaker was a Double Agent working for Waller. Why else would the Wall have put Flag on the team of sacrificial villain bait? He assesses, with tears in his eyes, that there is a fine line between being loyal to the government and letting them experiment on innocent people and children. Peacemaker agrees but points out they have bigger fish to fry. Or starfish, as it were.
Flag's death after trying to get the flash drive out of Peacemaker's hands. Cleo, to avenge him, grabs the drive and runs. Both Harley and Bloodsport mourn him later.
Reminiscent of the Injustice: Gods Among Us where good Lex Luthor's last words before Regime Superman kills him: "Your peace...is a joke." Similarly, in that case, Luthor used to be on Superman's team and his death leads into the third act and the killer goes off the deep end. But unlike Regime Superman, Peacemaker is taken down right before he can kill the youngest and most innocent member of the group.
Despite coming off as a Heroic Comedic Sociopath for most of the movie, it’s clear that Peacemaker respected Flag and felt bad about having to kill him. The look on his face when Flag dies says it all. Notably, when Ratcatcher is tearfully begging for her life, Peacemaker seems like he’s just barely holding back tears of his own. And to top it all off, even in his own show, Flag's death still haunts him.
If they're still together, somebody's gonna have to break the bad news to June Moone, and she willnottake it well.
Even worse? He was likely buried after Starro emerged, meaning that his body will never be found unlike Peacemaker.
Flag's death became nearly pointless as his desire to send the drive to the press failed alongside the many countless deaths of innocent civilians. Bloodsport knows that using the data as blackmail isn't what Flag wanted, but the remaining members may die as martyrs which can cause an international incident like what Peacemaker mentions and it wouldn't be worth leaving behind those who need them the most. Harley isn't happy with this, silently mourning for Flag and her earlier deceased friend Captain Boomerang, looking as if she is about to cry. Bloodsport's and Harley's words about this doesn't help either.
Bloodsport: Look, I know Flag wanted to give the drive to the press, but we just saved a whole bloody city. We can't have it all. Harley Quinn: Flag was my friend. Bloodsport: Mine too. And I haven't got many of those.
Milton, the resistance member serving as the team's designated driver, tags along for this dangerous mission. He gets shot, and Polka Dot Man avenges him by killing the soldiers that fired at him. Bloodsport asks with bewilderment why Milton came along when it wasn't his fight, and Harley asks who Milton is. Polka Dot Man, with the only time he's angry in the movie, says Milton came to sacrifice his life for them.
Polka Dot Man dies after feeling like a hero instead of a freak for the first time when he helps the Squad weaken Starro.
What's more, only Ratcatcher 2 seems distraught over his death. After Starro is defeated, we see Cleo sitting beside Abner's remains and holding a scrap of his costume in her hands. She doesn't let go of it for the rest of the film.
While they were not good people, there's something quite pitiable about the deaths of the first squad. The only one who doesn't count is Blackguard, on account of him being a traitorous asshole (unless you believe he was tricked, see the YMMV page).
Javelin resigns himself to his death, slowly bleeding out from bullet wounds before trying to pass on his weapon to a distraught, onlooking Harley.
TDK's weirdly endearing pride in his utterly strange way of helping is cut short when the enemy figures out his Logical Weakness, leading to his anticlimactic final defeat. Seeing him scream and wiggle around helplessly on the ground makes it painful to watch.
Mongal is left pathetically screaming when her attempt to bring down a helicopter doesn't go as planned. Even worse, she slowly burns to death after it crashes, desperately crawling out.
Captain Boomerang's demise is quite sad. Unlike the other members of the squad, he doesn't die due to his own incompetence, but rather due to Mongal's. Getting impaled by several pieces of palm tree wood that was cut from the crashing chopper, he then realizes he's done for, smiling one last time to Harley, who cries out to him before he's obliterated by the helicopter.
The previously stoic Savant is so horrified by the fates of his team that he breaks down and attempts to flee, so horrified he doesn't even appear to notice or care about Waller's orders before she blows his head off.
Weasel drowning also counts. Poor guy just flails about and screams not knowing what to do, unable even to cry "Help!" because he can't speak coherently. Though it later turns out he's okay.
While Harley manages to survive along with Flag (but not for long), she is shown to be scared by all of this, dismayed by Boomerang's and Javelin's deaths. She had to see her new teammates' deaths since she is placed on the team as a distraction. When she runs through the field of bullets and missiles shooting at her, she appears scared despite having the confidence to face the danger.
King Shark at his most childlike can give some sad moments, such as when he looks longingly at the bar where all the squad is having fun while having to stay hidden in the van, or when he builds a small figure of Peacemaker from explosive paste, only to get rebuked by the latter.
Perhaps the saddest is when Shark finds a huge aquarium at the base filled with octopi who dance around, even forming a shape like him. He's downright giddy jumping about and playing, feeling he's found friends...and then, when the tank bursts, it's revealed those octopi are really genetically enhanced piranha-like creatures who try to eat Shark and were merely sizing him up, not playing with him.
After King Shark is attacked by his aquatic friends and laying on the ground in front of the Corto Maltese army, a single tear can be seen falling down his face. King Shark was genuinely saddened that he was attacked by what he believed to be his new friends.
To twist the knife further, the soldiers fire on him. While the bullets bounce off him, Nanaue covers his face and curls up like a frightened child, almost as if the betrayal was that painful, he just wants it all to stop.
All the poor people in the city Starro infected. The soldiers are one thing, but these are normal men, women and children, tourists and others who were just going about their day, taken over by an alien intelligence and turned into his army.
Worse, unlike in the comics, when Starro dies, so do the hosts of his spores, meaning at least hundreds of deaths of purely innocent people.
Starro's entire predicament. It didn't infect all those people of its own free will; the only reason Starro even lives up to its title as a supervillain is because the Thinker was torturing it for decades straight in an attempt to create a powerful bioweapon. It begs the Suicide Squad to save it from Grieves' horrific experiments, and when they inevitably do, Starro decides to leave them alone even when it begins to take its wrath out on the rest of Corto Maltese. It takes the Suicide Squad actively attacking its to turn its wrath unto them, which further confirms the only reason Starro is acting out is because ithateshumanity (or at least the Corto Maltesian government for torturing it).
Starro's dying words. It gives a feeling that it never wanted any of this and ultimately drives home how tragic its entire being was.
Starro: I was happy. Floating. Staring at the stars.
Nanaue staring at the outside world while on the bus. Even when amongst his friends, it becomes clear that King Shark really wants to venture into the normal, outside world.
The extended, deleted scene makes this a poignant moment all while set to 'Sola' by Jessie Reyez. Nanaue watches people in the outside world talking, playing, dating or fighting each other; this is something he doesn't have since he isn't human. He can't go out in the outside world since people would treat him like an animal. With his time being treated as a criminal, he really wants to understand and enjoy how a human life feels like.
While mostly Nightmare Fuel, the fact that the families of journalists and political dissidents, including children were handed over to Jotunheim to be assimilated/killed by Starro and their corpses defiled by the Thinker.
Keeping the peace is worth any price — including the life of a hero like yours, sir — so please, don't make me do this.