Collage of DC Suicide Squad comic book covers featuring Harley Quinn, King Shark and other team members

Suicide Squad

2015franchise / photoshop memedeclining

Published September 29, 2026

DC Comics' Suicide Squad, formally Task Force X, is a team of jailed supervillains coerced into government black ops. The property broke into wider meme culture around David Ayer's 2016 film, whose Jared Leto Joker reveal photo spawned a Photoshop wave and whose rough reviews pushed fans to petition Rotten Tomatoes into shutdown3.

dc comics memes villain memes photoshop memes celebrity backlash memes so bad its good memes

Overview

The meme output from Suicide Squad hit in two waves. The first sat around Jared Leto's Joker, whose "damaged" forehead tattoo and metal-grill smile made the character an easy paste-in target after Ayer posted the reveal shot in April 2015. Photoshoppers dropped Leto's face into unrelated frames and lined the promo up against panels from Alan Moore's 1988 The Killing Joke, which the pose was staged to reference.

The second wave hit with James Gunn's 2021 The Suicide Squad, where Sylvester Stallone's childlike CGI King Shark pulled a swarm of reaction shots and direct comparisons to Marvel's Groot4. The first film's rough reception fed its own cycle: The New York Times knocked its "nihilistic swagger" as thin cover for tired superhero beats1, and Time called it "dead on arrival"5.

Origin & Background

Platform
DC Comics (source) / Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2015

DC Comics introduced the Suicide Squad in Brave and the Bold #25 in September 1959, then rebuilt the concept in the 1986 crossover Legends with warden Amanda Waller and the implanted-bomb setup that stuck through later runs. The meme cycle kicked in on April 24, 2015, when director David Ayer tweeted the first look at Jared Leto's Joker to mark the character's 75th anniversary; the image pulled over 40,000 retweets and 33,000 favorites inside 72 hours and set off a Photoshop wave using Leto's grinning face4.

How It Spread

The 2016 Suicide Squad film released on August 5, 2016 into brutal reviews. Metacritic logged 44 out of 100 across 35 critics7, Rotten Tomatoes settled at 33 percent2, and TheWrap flagged an overstuffed cast that squeezed out its stronger performances6.

The backlash produced its own artifact: a Change.org petition demanding Rotten Tomatoes shut down for "affecting people's opinion" of movies, which held 13,360 signatures on the day before release3. Five years later, James Gunn's standalone follow-up drew far better reviews but flopped at the box office, and its King Shark scenes became the most-shared clips from the sequel.

Timeline

1959-09

Original Suicide Squad debuts in DC Comics' Brave and the Bold #25 as a normal-hero team.

1986

John Ostrander reboots the team as Amanda Waller's black-ops squad in the Legends crossover, adding the implanted-bomb formula.

2015-04-24

David Ayer tweets the first Jared Leto Joker reveal photo, pulling 40,000 retweets in 72 hours and sparking a Photoshop meme.

2016-08-03

Change.org petition demanding Rotten Tomatoes shut down over the film's 33 percent score hits 13,360 signatures.

2016-08-05

Suicide Squad film releases to a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 44 Metacritic.

2021-08

James Gunn's The Suicide Squad releases; Sylvester Stallone's King Shark drives the sequel's meme output.

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