The 27 Most Outrageous Moments in 'Suicide Squad'

In one weekend, DC Comics' villain team-up movie, Suicide Squad, earned more than $135 million, making it the biggest August opening of all time. While we weren't thrilled by the franchise-starter, the movie insidiously worked its magic on summer movie-goers by mixing criminal behavior, comic book references, sequel setups, and bizarre twists. Here are the moments we'll be talking about until the new year (or at least the next superhero blockbuster).

Suicide Squad's opening, a kind of glorified PowerPoint, introduces us to Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). It's like a season's worth of Orange Is the New Black plotlines crammed into 20 minutes. Titles in wacky fonts add to the complex mythology; apparently, Flag "golfs with a three handicap," which should be an important easter egg if he gets his own PGA-set spin off movie.

As the tough-talking, ethically questionable Amanda Waller, Viola Davis brings all the gravitas she can muster. Even more impressively, she brought binders. Waller clearly gets some sort of government discount at Office Max or has a real disdain for iPads; either way, her binder game is strong.

Smith adds much needed charm to Suicide Squad. He also wears a really cool hat with a giant brim as he walks his daughter through the alleys of Gotham. In his quick flashback, we get a hint of what a Squad-less Deadshot spin-off movie could look like, and it looks a lot like Super Fly.

For all the introductions, one member of the Squad goes unannounced: Slipknot. "That's the the guy who climbs stuff," someone off-screen says when he shows up like the guy you don't know and clearly didn't invite to the party. Five minutes later, Slipknot bites the dust, for the sake of character management. Slipknot: we barely knew ye. Sorry, bud.

Though redesigned with a Tank Girl-meets-Suicide Girls outfit, Robbie's villainess appears in the original harlequin threads established in Batman: The Animated Series. The blink-and-you-miss-it cutaway features Harley and the Joker dancing the waltz, an image pulled directly from artist Alex Ross' Harley Quinn compilation cover. With a billion other ideas stuffed into the movie, this bit of fan-service was a welcome burst of beauty.

The music selection in Suicide Squad has an aesthetic you could call "Cool Dad's Spotify Playlist." There's some aggro hip-hop on there (Kanye West, Eminem, Action Bronson, Rick Ross, Kevin Gates) to show he's not a square, but the majority of it comes right from the classic rock radio playbook (The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, CCR, Black Sabbath). Given the revelation that the movie was recut by the same company who edited the first bubblegum-flavored trailer, it's unsurprising that the film leans on trailer staples like the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army," the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun," and, of course, Queen. All cool dads love Queen.

Aside from Will Smith's one-liners, most of the comedic heavy-lifting is left to Ike Barinholtz of Neighbors and The Mindy Project fame. That the source of comic relief is an abusive prison guard makes for an uphill climb, but Barinholtz does get off one very funny joke after his character is threatened by Smith's. Barinholtz tells one of his flunkies: "I want you to kill him and go clear my browser history." Funny and relatable!

Suiting up for the first time with the Squad, Harley Quinn unpacks her weapons and swaps shirts, drawing the attention of the horde of drooling men surrounding her. The camera plays up the moment by tracking up her body from toes to head, like the photographic embodiment of the Whistling Wolf from Droopy cartoons. Michael Bay, eat your heart out. Maxim, acquire printing rights.

In Suicide Squad, even hero moments look like the work of supervillains. Batman derails the fleeing Joker and Harley by diverting their car into the Gotham River. Joker escapes and leaves Harley to drown (this is why bad guys never wear seatbelts). Luckily Batman's around to subdue her with a punch to the nose, then perform CPR like Christian Grey in the Red Room. It's all a little awkward, especially for a guy known to slip in and out of darkness with grace.

If you missed his speedy cameo from Batman v Superman, Ezra Miller's the Flash shows up in this movie, too, to prove himself fast enough to catch a guy with no discernible skills who calls himself Captain Boomerang. The scene raises a few questions: does this appearance take place before or after Batman v Superman? If he's been fighting crime for awhile, why didn't he show up to Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman's big battle. Not cool, Flash. Not cool.

The only thing keeping the Clown Prince from rescuing his beloved Harley Quinn is his latest interior design project. Joker promised himself he'd get through all the pins on his "knives and furniture" Pinterest board, and he's not one to throw out a New Year's resolution.

Before Waller implants the Suicide Squad members with remote-detonating head bombs, she wants to know if they can do what they say they can do (despite the binders full of proof that they can). So she uncuffs the Deadliest Assassin on the Planet and asks him to fire off random weapons. If Deadshot was really bad, this would have gone another way.

If the whole ragtag-team of villains turned heroes thing doesn't work out for Diablo, he could make it in Vegas stage shows. Or skywriting ads. Or Food Network guest spots. The possibilities are endless. His fire calligraphy is up to snuff.

All he had to do was watch the volatile Enchantress. Easy! But when the rain began to pour, Flag hankered for chicken -- and lost himself in succulent BBQ meat.

Flag's soul-reaping swordsman hops on the Suicide Squad's plane to Midway City, and every member of the team shoots her the exact same look: another character? Apparently there are lost Katana scenes teased in trailers, but as far as the final product's concerned, ALL of Katana's scenes are lost.

Thanks for the reminder!

I take what I said earlier about Boomerang having no skills. At one point in the movie's jumbled finale, the bearded Aussie tosses a drone-like boomerang to spy on the Enchantress. This inspires so many questions the movie refuses to answer: Are all of his boomerangs outfitted with cameras? Does he carry a special drone-boomerang in his bag or something? Also, how do boomerangs actually work?

After a battle in the streets, a fluffy coat in a department store display catches the Deadliest Assassin on the Planet's eye. That's not just a child's size fur in the window... that's his daughter. Turns out, Suicide Squad isn't Mad Men, and moments of existential wandering are like a bad case of hiccups to this down-and-dirty action movie.

After the Squad rescues her from the invaded high-rise, Waller offs her surviving underlings. They "knew too much," apparently. Like that Waller is the reason there's a bad guy to fight in the first place? And you thought unpaid internships were bad.

They say power is a drug. Specifically ecstasy, in the case of Suicide Squad, which features a world-conquering deity sculpting the invisible water ball like its her third day at Bonnaroo. Call David Guetta -- I've found his new muse.

Let's call a moratorium on superhero movies with space-time-splitting wormholes. It's so common to see colorful, swirling masses above cut locales that IKEA now seeks DIY versions for $89.99. Truly the "basic" villain's end goal.

Are we crazy, or does Enchantress' brother look just like the Destroyer from Marvel's magical franchise?

If the government agent didn't do enough damage by initiating the Suicide Squad in the first place, her brain becomes the key to Enchantress' master plan. A moment where we see Davis hanging upside-down, tapped in to the witch's Floating Ball of Doom by a series of USB plugs, is just demented enough to work. 

Did the main villain actually die, or did Suicide Squad salvage Dr. June Moone for a sequel? After detonating a bomb inside her magic womb, the Squad discovers that Moone's physical body survived -- they just needed to peel back a layer of mud to find it. Clearly, Enchantress' exfoliation tactics are more rugged then we realized.

After saving the day, each Squad member receives a wish: Deadshot wants to see his daughter, Harley Quinn wants an espresso machine, and the Croc -- as payoff to a joke that didn't make the final cut? -- wants the cable network BET. The (bizarre!) assumption is that the Croc likes to watch rap videos with partial nudity, though we hope he wants to catch up on the next season of Being Mary Jane.

We can see the poster now. "2-icide Squad: now with actual Joker action!"

Suicide Squad's post-credit bumper pairs Ben Affleck and Viola Davis in a scene straight out of The Incredible Hulk credits. It'd be fantastic world-building if not for Batman v Superman's 10-minute, YouTube-watching interlude that accomplishes the same thing.

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