The Ten Worst Things Harley Quinn Has Ever Done!

On a similar note to the "Top Ten Worst Things That Happened To Harley Quinn" post, this time I'm going to have a look at "The Ten Worst Things Harley Quinn Has Ever Done!"

The title is unfortunate, I would have removed the 'Ever' part of it, seeing as how this video was posted back in April 2017, and the poster clearly underestimates how badly Harley can be written.
There are a lot of similar videos and posts out there too.

Let's get stuck in, shall we?

10) - Harley Quinn accidentally trains villainous kid soldiers

Now this is from New Suicide Squad #12 (Monsters Pt 4 ) where the squad encounters some dodgy League of Assassins splinter group and attempts to infiltrate them on Waller's orders... but with mixed results. Harley was supposed to be part of the super secret hidden back up team, but seeing as how she wanted to play with big noticeable guns she ended up getting captured. Yeah.. probably a bit of evidence as to why you don't really want Harley on your team. It's one thing to be useless to the missions, it's another to deliberately sabotage the team.

But I digress. Anyway, here's Harley sitting with the kids that the assassin dorks are raising, and in case you're wondering why they put an adult woman with a bunch of kids, it's because she immediately starts making fun of them and doing fart noises.

This goes over well with the kids who laugh their pants off, even causing Harley to Mona Lisa smile herself. There was some sort of plot thing where Harley had been doubting herself and who she was, but here she became a clown again, a performer that people wanted to see. However, when she enacts her escape plan, she slaughters a bunch of guards in front of the kids who aren't laughing anymore. 

They are traumatised, not a good combination for kids destined to become child soldiers. When Reverse-Flash finds them, they throw rocks at him. The kids chase the squad out of town, but despite this, Harley doesn't want them to blow up with the bomb so Reverse-Flash saves them for her, losing his own life in the process. This event sticks with Harley throughout the next few issues, dampening her enthusiasm for bloody murder and Suicide Squad shenanigans. 

VERDICT: DISAGREE

I forgot about this incident and how wide spread it was... Hell, this should have been on the worst things done TO Harley list! Now, the narrator of this video says that Harley was a bad influence on them and the KIDS beat and killed the guards, but they didn't. They witnessed Harley doing that and rejected her in the end. As for escaping... it's not so bad Harley wanted to help them get out. They were after all prisoners, and as Boomerang found out, not allowed to have any fun in their bleak life, despite just being kids. 

So I disagree, Harley wasn't trying to hurt the kids and was a wreck when she realised she upset them and also when she thought they were going to die. Besides, killing/stopping the terrorists was part of the Squad's goal so it's not like she completely left the reservation. 

9) Harley kidnaps a family

Okay... the narrator shows shots of Batman '66 Harley and says that Harley did this BEFORE leaving the asylum and joining Joker, but the story they're talking about is from Harley's second solo series, which takes place AFTER she splits up with the Joker. Soo.... not sure what happened there. Inaccuracy, or just not leaving a space after saying the title and launching into the subject matter? Anyway, this is not one of my favourite series and a good chunk of my reasoning is that the new writers turned Harley into a callous, murdering bitch for the most part and when she wasn't being any of that, she was rude and annoying AF. Sometimes she was all of the above. 

This particular story shows why the writers just don't get the character at all. 

So Harley is working at a nursing home doing psychiatric work (after spending about ten hours painting make-up over her nasty Joker skin) and after listening to a sob story from a grandma who never gets visits from her family... she decides to blow off her next appointment, illegally grab the address of the grandma's family, assault the receptionist, shove a courier when there was plenty of room in the reception and run off from her job. The one she JUST got. 

Arriving at the Rubenstein's address, she almost kills a room full of women when she demolishes the living room with stolen land moving equipment, destroys their TV and extensive model train set and assaults all the family members before shoving them in the trunk of their own car which she also steals. 

Then we get to sit through some pointless Greedo/Star Wars 'parody' and when she misses her roller derby match (her team lost) she goes and runs the other team over while her team mates feign shock but ultimately get off on it. Yeah, you read that right. It somehow made her cooler in their eyes instead of a really sore loser.

Finally she remembers she had the family in the trunk and takes them out to interrogate them about their neglect. The father reveals that she has Alzheimer's and doesn't remember how often they do actually visit her, but not before Harley's kicked the bound and gagged mother and son off the jetty.

Fortunately, and unbeknown to them it was low tide.. otherwise Harley would have been a murderer AGAIN for the simple reason that SHE DIDN'T BOTHER TO READ HER PATIENT FILES OR VET HER TARGETS TO SEE IF THEY WERE GUILTY.

Then, when she actually does go to read the files (after abandoning the family at the jetty and stealing their car... AGAIN) she meets Sy Borgman who essentially hires her to kill some other old guys just because he spins her another sob story... Harley's like "Hell yes these bastards are toast!" proving she learnt .....

................................................................nothing .... at all. 

VERDICT: AGREE

Yeah, just a dick move all around by Harley. You could argue that she was so blinded by injustice that she acted rashly but you could also argue that the incompetent writers changing Harley's character was to blame here. 

Harley was a character - a villain - that could hang out with the Clown Prince of Crime yet she did this for love, she was never into the villainey thing 'just because.' She was also very adept at pushing people's buttons and manipulating them. See her break in to Arkham Asylum in the Gotham City Sirens run for an excellent example of this. 

Here, Harley's new character is just punch your problems away and if anything inconvenient comes up, just blame being 'crazy'. She's just a colourful, vaguely clown themed thug who can't be arsed to look into anything before she acts. 

8) Harley throws the Joker's Daughter into traffic

Okay, not to be nit-picky but it's New Suicide Squad volume 1 issue 3, not Suicide Squad volume 1 issue 3.. Duela wasn't in the fourth iteration of the Suicide Squad and only appeared at the start of the re-issuing of that New52 series. 

Now, the whole time they had her on the squad I was wondering why they messed up Duela's character so hard, because it seemed like all she was there to do was be trashy and cat fight with Harley. And they were basically the same character, which is disgusting, thanks to Harley's "new persona". 

So yeah, Harley did push Duela into a car, but there was a bit more to it than that. They had been fighting for a while, mostly bickering but this issue it erupted into a fist fight. The narrator of the video says it was due to the temporary insanity of Harley Quinn - but I don't think so.

At the end of the fight she says this to Manta, standing over Duela's unconscious form. 

VERDICT: DISAGREE 

The whole fight she had been spouting things like telling Duela to be herself, not the Joker, that there was no future with him, how Joker was her biggest mistake and didn't want him to be Duela's as well. It was a nice twist that she did actually appear to be helping Duela.. seeing as how at the start it seemed like the former psychiatrist was unable to stop the psychological drama that came with a young girl wearing your former beau's face stapled to her own, all the while telling Harley that she was the new and improved version of her. 

Then again, not sure how much of the free therapy will hold up after Duela had the stuffing beaten out of her. Thought that counts? 

Anyway, my point is she didn't kick her into a car because she was annoyed at her (although I'm sure that was a part of it) she was trying to help Duela in the end. 

7) Harley Quinn bit the Joker's lip off

Back to Harley's Volume 2 solo run. I'm sighing, but at the same time, a lot of these examples are coming from the New52 sooo... not surprised. 

Now this issue was very polarising... some people praised it for Harley 'finally' standing up to the Joker ('cause that's never happened before, right?) and others panned it for the extremely out of character Batman, Poison Ivy and Joker characters. Guess which camp I was in! 

Who the hell is THIS sook supposed to be?!

Anyway, Harley breaks into Arkham Asylum.. which she actually does very poorly compared to the other times she breezed in there... She's trying to bust out Mason, one of her many lovers who was incarcerated for... actually, I don't remember what he did. He wasn't a very memorable character. 

As it turns out his cell is SUUUUUPER conveniently next to Joker's.

Now, check this out. Joker's been telling Mason all sorts of horrible things about Harley (maybe he watched this video too?) and Harley's upset that Mason believed it so easily.

Hahahaha.... penance for not reading your patient files, you miserable excuse for a clown!

*cough* but also, Mason didn't recognise Joker's voice? Seriously? I mean, sure, he lives in Coney or whatever but from what we've seen Gotham's not too far away, and Joker's pretty infamous. Plus, he knows Harley's history.. who else did he think was talking to him about Harley? 

Anyway Harley and Joker get into the most fan-fictioney brawl ever.. but the writer just didn't grasp the subtlety that was the abuse and manipulation side of the Harley/Joker romance. So, they made Joker buff as all hell, so it didn't look like Harley was beating up a weakling. The problem with making Joker buff though is that he's not. That's the point. He doesn't punch someone because he's the Joker, he sets elaborate death traps, he tricks them, he manipulates them, he uses a souped up joy buzzer.. he attacks when someone's back is turned, all of that. 

Here he just blatantly says stuff like 'you know you can't resist me/I made you' combined with just full on ramblings about his plan to get right back to beating Harley up, then he forces a kiss on her. 

This is when the lip bitey gets into play. Joker only ever kissed Harley if he was buttering her up or back when they were lovey dovey, or if they were acting as a couple IE Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. 

VERDICT: DISAGREE

This version of Harley can only deal with things using violence, so all nuance went out the window. 

Plus, Harley left Joker's cell door open and there was a guard's gun just lying there. What a nitwit. 

Then Batman forgives Ivy stealing his batboat (no water plant creation? And who the f*ck steals from Batman?!) and agrees that Mason has to serve time for his accidental murder of some dude.. but Harley, Mass Murderer Supreme - is totes cool to trot back to Coney. 

There was also a similar scene in Suicide Squad where she bit Joker there as well (I think it was his tongue). This precedes the Harley Quinn New52 solo but this is the example the video used. It's not like she bit some random's face off, it is the Joker - so no-one's gonna hold it against her. 

6) Harley Quinn helps create 'Joker Boy' in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker

Well, speak of the devil!

In this animated movie set in the futuristic Batman Beyond universe, we get several flashbacks to the Batman Animated series timeline showing the fate of Joker and Harley Quinn... and what they did to Tim Drake.

Namely - tricking him into 'helping' a poor lady in an alley. This lady turns out to be Harley in disguise, she whacks him with her ridiculously oversized mallet and brings him to Joker.







Over about three weeks, they hide out and torture Tim - shocking him, drugging him, mutilating him until the boy cracks. He gives up Batman's identity - so you know how far he was pushed. Tim is also transformed into a sick parody of himself, but Jokerised.

Tying into the 'wanting a family but without the effort' joke, the devilish duo state that Batman always had a spare kid running around anyway.





He struggles with his competing minds.. seemingly lost into madness
and helping
Harley and Joker fight Batman and Batgirl... but then later when pushed further, he snaps and shoots Joker, killing him before his manic laugh dissolves into shaky tears.





Tim received a lot of care but ultimately retired and struggled with his past well into his later years. His torment wasn't done yet, due to Joker's back up plan, he was haunting Tim from the grave. Joker even teamed up with Harley's twin granddaughters and their Jokerz gang to cause the current Batman nothing but grief.

VERDICT: AGREE

This one is definitely up there with her worst antics. That she helped kidnap Robin and put him through torture and disfigurement - so she could play happy families with Joker. She acknowledges to Batgirl that's she done wrong but is confident that she can 'make it right'.

It showed how far Harley was willing to go for her Puddin' and it shocked a lot of her fans.

5) Harley distributes lethal explosive video games to kids

Do I even need to explain this one? We all know I'm gonna agree with it!

Ohkay... straight out of the tedious Forever Evil storyline we have Detective Comics 23.2/Harley Quinn #1 which was just a visual nightmare on paper. 

Well - the art wasn't the problem. It wasn't the best, but we've all seen worse art - Like the cover of this issue! Holy disproportion, Batman! - No, the issue was what the art was depicting. 

Like every other villain - apparently - it all boils down to a childhood sob story before showing us what they're up to now. In Harley's case, we get maybe a brief glimpse into her childhood and when she was working at the asylum but it's mostly glossed over so we can learn how she got her outfit together. 

Yeah... I kids you not. Unfortunately, it's not even a good origin story for her outfit either. She just walks around looking like a stoned raccoon (it appears Joker dumped her the second after she got him out and just after her acid bath....soo.... great relationship)and finds people who have two toned clothing that matches her new hair colour exactly. Surprisingly, it's a popular colour set in Gotham. 

No one is safe! Not cheerleaders, pawn shops, joggers, fast food workers... hookers.... 

Yeah, bits like STD's and cheap pawn shop crap

And still no one is safe because she didn't even wash her new outfit before wearing it around. Yuck!

But the big problem is that while waiting for a super villain meeting - Harley sets up an elaborate attack where she outsources work to some random company that makes little knock off Gameboy Advances. She dresses up as a cop, hands them out free to kids or whoever will take them where she dumps them near a charity store. Then she blows up a police station for some reason... I don't know why, it's got nothing to do with the story if there is one. 

Later she orders an update to the game, which sets off the bombs in each device. This, presumably kills a lot of people.

But it doesn't make her happy! No, she looks more depressed than ever because she didn't get Joker's attention back. 

VERDICT: AGREE

Wotta bitch. That's all you can really say. She spends the whole comic talking about how she's free from restraint, how she looks down on everyone else because they're not like her... then she sits down and plans about an elaborate scheme just so she can sit back and be like "Yep! That's me! Unplanned chaos!" She wanted the Joker's attention? Maybe she forgot that clowns are supposed to be funny.. not just punchline without the set up. 

After the backlash that this issue got, DC backpedalled harder than you can say Holleee Somethingoroleee - and then issued the new Harley solo where she's so zany and crazy hahaha pleaseforgetsheeverkilledallthosekids. 

4) Getting banned from hell

Now it wasn't immediately clear which version the narrator was referring to. I think he means in her original solo series. Harley has been to hell at least twice, one in said solo series and one in her Injustice series. 

Running to Billy's aid against Zeus

With the Injustice series, it was because she was killed, alongside Shazam/Billy Batson and Wonder Woman's mom/Hippolyta. But she wasn't banned from hell, they were able to escape using wits, green pills, manipulating Superman and a mother box. 

I don't think anyone particularly wanted her to stay in the Underworld, she kept calling people out for farting and starting fights with who she perceived as the biggest baddie in the jail. 

I liked how she kept her casual, joking attitude. 

Now, in her original solo series, she was killed via exploding jet-pak and after suffering the worst fate for someone like her (being kept in solitary with no one to hear her) she found that Petit - a rogue cop that Joker and Harley first messed with, and then shot - was running the jail she was incarcerated in. 

Eventually, after several rounds of escaping and being 'killed' again, she found a way to actually escape and the bounty hunter Highwater was put on the case. 

She formed a new gang - catching up with all of her deceased Quinntets along with some new faces - but they still struggled to escape for good. 

 Harley - despite being deceased and facing eternal damnation - never loses her hope, determination or her willingness to believe in love or the best of people.














Eventually she makes her way to the River Styx and when Charon doesn't budge, she shoves him off his own boat.

That's pretty bad ass... and kinda unthinkable!

All the while being pursued by Highwater - watching her friends and new acquaintances die painfully - either because they bolted, or tried to protect her.

They realise they're all in Harley's personal hell.

Harley - perhaps a bit ignorant of the chaos she spread into the Quinntet's lives - now comes to realise what she did wrong. 

VERDICT: DISAGREE 

Yes - Harley did get kicked out of hell but it wasn't because she was too bad for hell or anything. She did disregard all of their rules but at the end of the day it was because she tried to help people. In her own words, she thought 'a bit of lovin' would make the eternal sufferin' a bit easier to take'.. which entirely negates the point of hell.

It was her helping Highwater with his damned quest that was the cincher. Without the hate in Highwater's heart, he wouldn't be able to continue his work as Hell's most effective bounty hunter.
So no, this wasn't one of the worst things Harley did - at all.
Harley just wasn't cut out for hell so Etrigan kicked her out, but you should note that she wasn't given her life back either.

3) Harley decapitates 'her' grandma

Gods and Monsters mini series - an Elseworlds version of Harley named The Harlequin is a complete serial killer, who keeps multiple bodies/body parts in her fridge/freezer next to her Grape Soder. She also keeps decomposing, posed corpses in a fake living room so she can take selfies. 

I would change the wording of this title a lot because it's not her grandma, it's some random dead person she killed, and she wasn't trying to cut her head off, she was aiming for Batman and lost control. I mean, she was pretty upset once she realised what happened. 

VERDICT: AGREE - SORT OF

I agree this is pretty bad - but not for the grandma thing in particular.. I agree because she's a horrific serial killer running around in her underwear and garters hoarding hacked up body parts, making up a sad nuclear family for herself in the basement. I mean, she had the woman intended to be her little sister held captive, she was about to be murdered and mutilated... does no one care about that?

2) Harley Quinn puts the Joker's face on Deadshot

I think this scene is obligated to make all of these lists. 

Anyway, after killing a bunch of people and later getting a bunch of people killed, Harley has completed her jail break and is in Gotham City. 

She's here to get her boyfriend's face. The Squad's here to stop her. Or trying to. Without lethal force, I might add. 

It's like the writers here heard about Joker getting his face cut off in the New52 and thought.. how can we make this worse?

A psychotic break, complete with flashbacks and internal monologue. Oh, and I guess putting said skinned face onto Deadshot's bare skin so she could 'talk' to the Joker. That's pretty nasty.







Deadshot plays along - although even in an episode like this, I'm surprised the Joker's number one fangirl would settle for anything less. Hell, she even acknowledges he's dead. So is this some sort of conduit via still bleeding flesh? Or confusion because she ships herself with Deadshot too?

Who knows but it's gross and nasty... also words I would often use to describe New52 Harley Quinn. 

VERDICT: AGREE

Yeah, I agree with this one. It's pretty deranged to do this to someone else, then force yourself on them too. Also it's bad story-telling... Joker blood must be ten times as potent as Joker gas but Deadshot comes out of this fine. Mentally scarred, maybe, but he still wants the clown booty. 

1) Slitting the Joker's throat at their wedding

Wow, this wouldn't have been my number one pick. This is from Injustice Gods Amongst Us the video game, more specifically Harley's ending scene. The couple get married but when Joker pushes her face first into the cake, she snaps and slits his throat with the knife. 

Now, yeah, that's a pretty bad thing to do, but are we going to ignore the start of Injustice, where she helps Joker get Superman to kill a pregnant Lois Lane and detonates a nuclear device? The narrator said that 'even though it was the Joker it was a cold move to do it at their own wedding and that's why it's the worst thing she's ever done.'

Basically becoming The Bride from Kill Bill

VERDICT: DISAGREE

Nope, can't move past the whole helping Joker Scarecrow gassing Superman thing to trick him into killing his pregnant wife and then dooming the world into being run by an evil Superman.  

I mean, what attitude is this? 

If you read an article about a woman who had been going through domestic abuse at the hands of her partner for who knows how long and then she went on to shoot or kill him/her or something as the only, desperate, last resort way to defend herself... would you think 'Well that's clearly the worst thing ever!'?? Or would you sympathise with the DV survivor in that traumatic experience? 

Tally

Agreements: 4.5

Disagreements: 5

Undecided: 0.5

What would I add to the list?

* That time she failed to save a young orphaned girl from going blind (Harley Quinn volume one)

* That time she killed an airport worker and left her body stuffed into someone else's suitcase because her own bags were delayed/missing (Harley Quinn volume two)

*That time she worked with Sy Borgman to murder a bunch of old guys because he just told her they were bad... she didn't bother to check anyone's facts. (Harley Quinn volume two)

* That time she did her very best to screw up the Bombshells timeline by killing Hitler (Harley Quinn volume two/Little Black Book)

*The murder of her loyal henchman... Lewis (Harley Quinn volume one)

* Owning and using a scatapult. On poop and people. (Harley Quinn volume two)

*Being in the Suicide Squad movie (DCEU)

* Trying to kill Batman just to get Joker's attention, under the misguided notion that it would 'fix' their relationship (Batman: Mad Love)

*After being the victim of several people's demented and unwanted attention, causing her to get into some dangerous situations... she then spikes someone else's drink with the same berry from Poison Ivy that started it all. (Harley Quinn volume two)

* Murdering her family in cold blood (Batman: Thrillkiller - Elseworlds)

* Helping Joker get Petit to kill his own cops/standing by while Joker shoots Huntress several times (No Man's Land)

* Distracting Batman while Joker took all the No Man's Land babies hostage and then shot Sarah (No Man's Land) 

* Stringing Bizarro along when she had no intention of helping him find a mate while he was her Anti-Superman Shield (Harley Quinn volume one)