With Suicide Squad being released recently, we've seen a lot of focus on Harley Quinn and the Joker. From their separate characters – to this day, people still talk about Heath Ledger's award-winning performance – to the two together, these villains are some of the most famous comic characters. Every now and again, I've seen people (usually teenage girls who think The Dark Knight is the only Batman movie ever made) post pictures of Joker and Harley Quinn, saying things non-ironically like “relationship goals” or “why can't I find a guy who loves me like the Joker loves Harley?” As a comic fan for most of my life, it's very scary to see this sort of thing from people who aren't using it as a twisted joke. Because the relationship between the two is nothing to idolize.

The origin of Harley Quinn completely relies on the Joker's psychological abuse and conditioning that he places onto her. Dr. Harleen Quinzel (I know, I know – it's from a cartoon, what did you expect?) begins interning at Arkham Asylum, where she wants the chance to examine one of Gotham's notorious criminals. She gets her wish when she is assigned to the Joker, who immediately sees potential in her. Joker tells her a false story about why he is the way he is, and often makes himself sound less insane and more like a tortured soul with no way out. Quinzel takes pity on him, and he keeps using her fragile psyche to get a way out of Arkham – and one night, Quinzel acquires the now-famous red and black costume, and the two break out of the asylum together, and she takes the name “Harley Quinn.” The current origin also involves the Joker pushing her into a tank of chemicals, bleaching her skin, as if to make her live the way he does. By using an untrue account of his origins, Joker is able to get her to believe that he needs her, when he'd rather see her dead than hanging around him.

Because of her devotion to him, The Joker often uses Harley Quinn as nothing more than a glorified henchman. She is in love with him, while he simply uses her until she does what he needs, then practically ignores her. He consistently yells at her, breaks her down, convinces her that he is the only person who can love her at all, now that she's lost her sanity, and physically abuses her whenever he feels like it. And despite all this, Harley Quinn keeps coming back to him. This is a very obvious abusive relationship, where one refuses to see the real horrors of the other, and no matter what, believes that if they leave, then the other will otherwise cause more harm. Joker essentially treats her as just somebody to use whenever he sees fit, something that multiple supporting characters have pointed out. Without the Joker, Harley Quinn believes she is nothing, and wants to be loved, something that the Joker truly is incapable of.

In the 2011 DC Comics The New 52! relaunch, Harley Quinn finally left the Joker after over nineteen years, and started working on her own. Her role in the popular Suicide Squad series helped bring the character mainstream, as well as her self-titled solo series, which occasionally involved the Joker finding her again – in an amazing visual move by the artist and writer team of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palminotti, the lettering of the Joker's text is sharp, angular, and very demonic, as if to show the Joker as Harley Quinn's personal devil. The characters have gone their separate ways, with the Joker most notably appearing in Scott Snyder's Death of the Family and Endgame storylines in the main Batman title, while the Harley Quinn series is lighter in tone, featuring a much happier and brighter look at her. It took this long for the split, and with it, each character has shown their true selves – the Joker as a sadistic, insane murder, and Harley Quinn as a person driven insane by forces beyond her control.

The best portrayal of the abusive relationship is in the 1999 episode of Batman: The Animated Series, titled “Mad Love.” This episode of the critically-acclaimed cartoon that prided itself on being just safe enough for a Saturday morning timeslot, but took itself seriously enough that many episodes were more targeted to an adult audience, is the first telling of the Harley Quinn origin, seen via flashback. The main plot involves Joker (the iconic voice of Mark Hamill) trying to figure out how to take down Batman after a failed attempt on Commissioner James Gordon's life, and when Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin, for whom the character was directly written) adds to one of the plans, she takes matters into her own hands. Throughout the episode, Joker yells and insults her, and hits her twice onscreen. Batman tells her that everything Joker told her was a lie, and he doesn't care about her. She doesn't believe him, and calls Joker. When he arrives, he tells her that because she had to explain why she adjusted the plan, it was not longer a “joke,” as she had to explain it. Joker pushes her out of a high-rise window, where she is severely injured. As the image of Harley Quinn, broken and bleeding comes onscreen, she says sadly: “My fault...I didn't get the joke.” And yet, in the end, she finds a vase of flowers in her cell at Arkham, from the Joker – not a sign of love, but a sign of complete power over her.

I could go on and on about the psyche of the two, but really, I'd much rather you go out and read the comics. Honestly, an entire term paper could be written about them. It's one thing to hear someone talk about the relationship, but it's a completely different thing to read it on the printed page. Joker and Harley Quinn are a major example of comics taking on an issue within society and discussing it. So don't go into Suicide Squad expecting Jared Leto and Margot Robbie to have a “cute” Joker/Harley scene, and really consider whether or not you want somebody to treat you “like Joker treats Harley Quinn.” Because really, just because two people are crazy, it does not mean that they're good for each other. Especially not when one is driven to madness by the other.