Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic is part of the recurring SMBC series "Great Thing About Parenting," in this case entry number 6626: "Making Your Kids Hate What You Hate." A child innocently asks her father, "Daddy, why do

This comic depicts two men noticing an attractive woman walking by. One nudges the other and says "Look at her ass." But instead of the typical crude response, the comic zooms in on the second man's s

This comic is a wordless strip about a child asking his parents where babies come from. The father begins by showing the child a picture of a baby, and the child looks confused. The parents then take

Two children discover that their twenty-foot-tall snowman has fallen over during the night. One child, undeterred, exclaims "Wait! I have an idea!" In the final panel, the child has climbed inside the

This single-panel comic shows a child kneeling beside her bed at night, praying: "Dear Lord, please cure my mommy in a way that is indistinguishable from the results of proper medical treatment." The

## The Joke Someone sits down to look up one thing on Wikipedia. Three hours later, they've read about the French Revolution, the mating habits of octopuses, the history of the accordion, and the che

A man sits at his computer watching the news, thinking indignantly: "How are politicians still using that argument?! Don't they know it was satirized on a blog I read!?" The caption below reads: "Some

The comic introduces a fictional word: "Exigology (noun): A statement whose converse is its own explanation." It then provides four examples. A man says "Politicians never do what my group wants, so I

This comic is titled "A Short History of Tool Use" and depicts the evolution of tools across four panels, all without dialogue. In the first panel, a stick figure uses a simple tool (like a hammer or

This comic is titled "Confession Strategy: Try Humor!" A man is talking to another person (shown in silhouette) and sets up what sounds like a joke: "What's the difference between your wife and gonorr

This is a lengthy comic that explores the Gettier problem in epistemology, framed as a conversation between a father and his child. The child asks "Daddy, how do we know things?" and the father explai

This comic explores a scenario about sending signals to alien civilizations. In the first panel, a woman debates the risks: "Finding intelligent life would be huge, but... what if we're advertising ou

This comic shows a student talking to a nun (or a teacher at a religious school). The student exclaims: "What!? Technically it's correct!" Below the panel is what appears to be a test question: "1) Wr

This comic shows a father holding a young child and explaining the concept of time dilation using a fantasy metaphor. He says: "So, the goblins cast time spells on you, which make you get older. But,

This comic is a Peanuts parody featuring Charlie Brown and Schroeder. Charlie Brown reveals that the Little Red-Haired Girl -- his legendary, never-seen crush -- has finally kissed him, but he discove

This comic features a confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor, but with a satirical twist. Luthor announces he has poisoned the water supply to kill everyone within a hundred-mile radius, but Su

This comic is a four-panel joke about the nature of justice and authority. A child asks his mother a genuinely deep philosophical question: "Is justice an intrinsic quality of the universe, or is it a

This comic imagines what would happen if lottery tickets came with warning labels similar to those on cigarette packages. The caption reads, "We already put warning labels on cigarettes. Why not lotte

This comic plays on the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation -- the belief held in Catholicism that during the Eucharist, wine literally becomes the blood of Christ. A gleeful child (or person) ex

This comic is titled "Conversation Trick #57721: Self-Referential Phrases." It shows a man saying to another person: "I've got four words for you: four equals three." The joke is a self-referential p

This comic plays on the concept of soulmates with a clever structural twist. In the top panels, a woman exclaims: "My God! I thought I was the only one!" and a man responds: "Me too! We're made for ea

This comic depicts a group of anthropomorphized books sitting around a campfire in the woods, as if at summer camp or on a camping trip. One book, positioned behind the fire like a campfire storytelle

This comic satirizes the common religious argument that atheists secretly worship themselves. One character tells another, "My theory is that even though you're an atheist, you still worship. You just

This comic illustrates what Zach Weinersmith calls "the scariest thing about science." In the first panel, a woman complains that her carrot cake has raisins in it. Her companion, a bespectacled man w

This comic plays with the concept of confirmation bias in a self-referential way. In the first panel, an older bearded man (resembling a professor or academic) explains to a younger man how he validat

This single-panel comic offers a "life tip" in the style of a humorous public service announcement. The header text reads: "Life tip: When leaving a conversation, you can say anything, and people will

This comic depicts a bar scene where a man tries a cheesy pickup line on a woman: "Hey baby, looks like you could use some sexual healing." The woman responds matter-of-factly, "I don't think that'll

This comic jokes about the intersection of coming out as gay and fundamentalist Mormon polygamy. A young man is shown saying: "Mom, Dad, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom... I'''m gay." The caption be

This comic contrasts how a normal person and a statistician react to the same tragic news report. In the top panel, labeled "Normal Person," a TV newscaster announces: "Estimates suggest 428,620 peopl

This comic skewers the stereotype of the hyper-logical nerd who ruins romantic moments by being technically correct. In the first panel, a woman says to her bespectacled boyfriend: "I wouldn'''t trade

This comic satirizes how public figures respond to scientific correction by simply substituting one wrong term for another. In the first panel, a politician at a podium declares to a crowd: "And in ou

This autobiographical-style comic is narrated by a red-haired character (resembling the author, Zach Weinersmith) reminiscing about childhood. The narrator recalls waiting by the street for his mom to

This comic presents a graph comparing "Life Satisfaction" (y-axis) versus "Age" (x-axis) for two groups: "Most People" (in red) and "Nerds" (in blue). The red curve for most people shows satisfaction

This single-panel comic plays on the double meaning of the word "Love" as both the abstract concept and a person'''s surname. A red-haired man enthusiastically declares to an unimpressed woman: "Love

This comic, titled "It Cuts Both Ways," makes a pointed argument about the symmetry of the "nothing to hide" defense. In the first panel, a government official in sunglasses and a suit declares, "If y

This comic depicts a father'''s internal struggle when his young daughter announces she wants to grow up to be a princess and marry a prince. The father immediately spirals into an elaborate internal

This comic offers a humorous origin story for why cats sit on important things. In the first panel, set in prehistoric times, cave people observe a cat sitting atop their king and declare, "Behold! It

This comic plays with the idea of reincarnation by presenting life in the womb from the perspective of an unborn baby who believes the womb is the entirety of existence. The fetus reflects philosophic

This comic takes the well-known factoid that "it takes more muscles to frown than to smile" -- commonly used to encourage people to be cheerful -- and extends it to an absurd conclusion. A woman is gi

This comic takes the common expression "the Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves" -- used to express outrage at perceived violations of constitutional principles -- and imagines it as a

This three-panel comic plays with the cliche of "I can'''t sleep with you because you'''d lose respect for me." In the first panel, a man tells a woman, "I can'''t sleep with you... I'''m concerned yo

This comic reimagines the Garden of Eden story with a modern, slacker teenager as Adam. A shadowy serpent-like figure (the Devil) approaches a young man sitting in a chair playing video games and atte

This comic presents "The Victorian Legitimacy Test" -- a humorous rule for determining whether a complaint is legitimate. The rule states: "If you can say your complaint like a Victorian Lord without

This single-panel comic shows a family gathered around a Thanksgiving dinner table with a roasted turkey, saying grace. Instead of thanking God for the meal, the patriarch offers a scientifically accu

This comic depicts a hostage situation at an art museum where a man with a gun threatens to shoot the Mona Lisa, shouting "Stay back! Back, or I'''ll turn her into modern art!" The police yell "Get hi

This comic satirizes the frustrating disconnect between humanity'''s lofty ideals about science and exploration versus the political reality of how funding decisions are actually made. A politician st

This comic follows a narrator who explains that their mom was becoming a "creepy cat lady," shown exclaiming "I have so many babies!" about her cats. To help cure her obsession, the narrator creates a

This comic is a promotional announcement rather than a traditional SMBC strip. It was posted on November 7, 2011, as one of several bonus comics published that day to coincide with the release of a ne

This comic takes the well-known mathematical constant pi and literalizes its reputation for showing up unexpectedly in equations. In the first panel, a man is studying a paper and asks "Why is pi in t

This single-panel comic offers a darkly realistic twist on the classic motivational speech a parent gives to a child. A father tells his child: "Sweetie, if you work reaaaaly hard, and focus reaaaaly