The Suicide Squad Fan Theory That Will Change How You See Harley Quinn

Contains spoilers for "The Suicide Squad"

"The Suicide Squad" is here, and it's everything you could want out of a James Gunn-directed gonzo superhero project with a hard R rating. There's a ton of blood and numerous creative sequences where people meet excessively violent ends. That's on top of all of the raunchy humor Gunn was known for early in his career from the likes of "Super" and "Slither." As long as you're up for a bonkers moviegoing experience, it's easy to see why the film has been such a hit with critics and audiences alike. 

One of the most entertaining scenes in the film comes when Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) breaks out of a heavily armed compound. She takes down one guard after the next with various firearms she picks up along the way. And after a while, all of the blood that comes gushing out of her victims takes on the aesthetic of colorful flowers and cute cartoon birds. It's a brilliant stylistic flourish that shows how Gunn knows how to make a run-of-the-mill action sequence all his own. 

Of course, fans think the foliage was more than an added touch. After the film's release, an intriguing theory emerged about what all of those flowers could really mean.

You weren't alone if you thought the colorful fight scene looked familiar. In "Birds of Prey," when Harley goes to the police station, a similar-looking fight breaks out where it seems like she's shooting people with smoke bombs and confetti. One way of looking at that scene is that all of the eccentricities are in Harley's imagination, and she's killing those men with real bullets. Something similar could be said for the sequence where she escapes from the Corto Maltese government. We know the guards aren't actually filled with flowers in place of blood, but that's merely what Harley perceives it. And some believe that's one of her superpowers.

In a Reddit thread discussing the film, one user mentions, "I believe it was revealed in some interview that that's her 'power.'" Someone else responds, "Yeah, 'Harley-Vision'!" Those statements are accurate, as an interview with production designer Beth Mickle published by Screen Rant attests. She clarifies, "The idea is that there is a 'Harley Vision,' like how she sees the world and how she sees things, and it's possibly with animated flowers and tweety birds. She's very happy, so we explored some concept art to see what that that could look like, and how we would render it in the film."

For someone like Harley, it would be a useful power. It allows her to see the world in a different light to commit these atrocities without feeling too bad about it. After all, in her last two cinematic outings, she's had to take down scores of people without having it slow her down, and believing the world is filled with shiny objects and Disney-esque animals fluttering about would help her with that.