Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic features two people discussing how every era of human civilization has unknowingly engaged in some harmful practice. The woman lists examples: Romans used lead pipes, medieval people dumped

This comic presents a graph plotting "Desirability" against "Penis Length (cm)" on a logarithmic scale. The graph shows two sharp peaks in desirability: one around 10 cm labeled "What Most Women Want,

This comic presents an alternate history of economics framed as a series of magical transmutations. In the first panel, alchemists discover transmutation and turn dirt into gold. In the second, econom

This comic explores the simulation hypothesis -- the philosophical idea that our reality might be a computer simulation. A woman expresses fear about this possibility, and a man asks why that would be

This comic begins with a grand, poetic vision of humanity's future. A narrator describes how humans will one day transfer their brains into machines, travel the stars like great whales through the oce

This comic is titled "As Above, So Below" and draws a structural parallel between the military-industrial complex and what it calls "the masturbatory-porndustrial complex." The top diagram shows the w

This comic plays on the idea of personal identity and how people change over time. A man claims he's "always been a bit of a geek," but his girlfriend challenges this by using a time machine to summon

This comic humorously contrasts stereotypical male and female perspectives on engineering by placing them in the unexpected context of sex toys. The female engineer enthusiastically describes the tech

This comic satirizes how religious teachings about prayer can draw arbitrary lines around what constitutes acceptable requests to God. A young girl named Susie prays, "Dear God, please punch Bobby in

This comic takes a sardonic look at the romanticization of nature. In the first panel, a couple on a savannah safari begins to wax poetic about nature's beauty -- "the sunset, the sweet savannah breez

This comic satirizes the disconnect between pure physics research and practical application. A scientist announces the discovery of an alternate universe with no maximum speed (i.e., no speed of light

This single-panel comic depicts an ice cream truck driver who has taken his truck onto a boat and is sailing offshore, playing his jingle music over the water while taunting the children on the beach:

This comic is a crude teenage humor gag about an adolescent boy who has invented what he calls an "I.B.L.D." -- an "Improvised Boner Light Deflector." He proudly announces to his friends that he's bee

This comic mocks the trope of the naive undergraduate who thinks they can overturn an entire academic field with a simple moral observation. A student in an economics class stands up and declares that

This comic features a professor at a lectern delivering what appears to be an argument about the cruelty of life's timing. He observes that when you were 15, you could have eaten outrageous junk food

This comic is a dark parody of the classic *Peanuts* scenario in which Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown to kick, only to pull it away at the last moment. Here, Lucy actually lets Charlie Brow

This single-panel comic takes place in what appears to be a brothel or similar establishment. A nervous-looking man asks a sex worker if he can get a discount on a handjob because he "only needs the l

This comic features a mad-scientist-type physicist who has invented the "Lorentz Fridge," a device that uses a particle accelerator to keep food fresh. He explains that he puts a plate of bacon into t

This comic presents a recursive simulation hypothesis joke. In three successive panels, alien-like beings at increasingly higher levels of reality complain that "the universe's physics is too complica

This comic explores the universal human tendency to prioritize short-term comfort over long-term well-being. It presents a series of escalating scenarios where characters acknowledge a serious long-te

This single-panel comic plays on a crude domestic stereotype for comedic effect. A woman complains to a man, saying she feels like she has to label everything in the house "Not for your penis!" -- wit

This single-panel comic depicts a couple in bed. The woman cheerfully tells the man, "I got some tips from your mother." The man looks visibly horrified and uncomfortable. Below the panel, the caption

This comic riffs on the real-life physicist Erwin Schrodinger and his well-known thought experiment about quantum superposition. In the main panel, a character resembling Schrodinger is at a social ga

This three-panel comic humorously depicts the discovery of natural gas by prehistoric humans. On Day 1, two cavemen observe strange fumes seeping from a hole in the earth. One immediately declares it

This comic is a graph-based joke titled "Relationships: A Guide." It plots different types of relationships on two axes: the x-axis runs from "Hate" to "Love," and the y-axis represents "Amount of Sex

This comic uses math as a weapon in a relationship argument. A woman accuses a man of treating her like she does not exist. The man responds with an elaborate mathematical chain of reasoning: "Well, y

This comic explores the popular myth that mathematician Georg Cantor went mad from contemplating infinity, then subverts it with historical context and a punchline. The first panel presents the common

This two-panel comic contrasts what the general public values in scientific discoveries versus what scientists themselves value. The top panel, labeled "Discoveries People Cherish," shows an excited s

This comic satirizes the engineer's compulsion to optimize systems, even when the optimization is wildly impractical. In the first panel, an apartment manager tells a new tenant that water and gas are

This comic tells the story of a group of people who clone Adolf Hitler in order to punish him for his historical crimes. However, the premise quickly subverts expectations: without political power, Cl

This single-panel comic is captioned "God creates the sperm whale." It depicts a radiant, godlike sun figure hovering above the ocean, addressing a whale below with the proclamation: "You shall flouri

This comic presents a chart titled "How to Communicate with Writers," organized as a grid with three columns (Novelist, Poet, Screenwriter) and three rows (How to Anger, How to Delight, How to Ruin Fo

This comic presents two graphs illustrating parallel "laws" about exponential growth outpacing human capacity. The first graph describes "The Law of Computer Bloat," which states that no matter how fa

This comic features two scientists discussing time travel. A woman asks a man how his first time travel experience went. He enthusiastically reports that he went back and changed things so that the wo

This comic is titled "1 + 1 = ?" and presents how different types of thinkers would respond to this simple arithmetic question. A 6 year old cheerfully answers "2!" -- the correct and straightforward

This single-panel comic shows two girls talking behind a brick wall at what appears to be a prom or school dance. The caption reads "The Battle of Stalingrad turned out to be an unpopular prom theme."

This comic is titled "Movies have a lot of bad science. How come there's never bad math?" It imagines what a disaster movie would look like if it were based on mathematical errors instead of scientifi

This comic presents an alternate history of the Space Race, arguing through absurd pseudo-logic that the key to long-duration space travel is sending non-monogamous gay astronauts. The reasoning chain

This single-panel comic presents a "Horrible Truth" in the style of SMBC's recurring informational banners: "All technological progress is due to humanity's unearned sense of entitlement." Below the b

This comic plays on the contrast between romantic eloquence and physical awkwardness. A man and woman stand on a dock overlooking the ocean at sunset, and the man delivers a genuinely beautiful monolo

This comic is titled with two escalating labels: "Scary" and "Really Scary," exploring the unsettling nature of death from increasingly reductive scientific perspectives. In the first panel, labeled

This comic riffs on the legend of Merlin from Arthurian mythology, specifically the version (popularized by T.H. White's "The Once and Future King") in which Merlin ages backward through time -- he wa

This comic takes the common childhood scenario of a kid telling their parent there's a monster under the bed and gives it a darkly comedic twist. A child calls out "Daddy! There's a monster under my b

This comic features an alien accompanying a human man at what appears to be a bar or social venue, trying to help him find a mate. The alien keeps pointing out human women and asking "What about this

This comic presents a grid-style chart titled "Communicating with Academics: A Guide" with three columns (Theologian, Scientist, Philosopher) and three rows (How to Make Angry, How to Make Happy, How

This comic features a mad scientist villain gleefully unveiling their latest creation: "A Tyrannosaurus with its entire brain encased in transparent aluminum! The most horrible monster of all time! Pr

This single-panel comic is titled "If Real Life Were Like Political Debate." It shows two people in an outdoor setting: a woman confronts a man, saying "You punched my toddler in the face!" The man re

This comic is titled "Relationship Pranks" and presents an absurd scenario: "At the last possible moment, convince your wife having a baby was a terrible idea." The single panel shows a shirtless man

This comic shows a boy kneeling at his bedside in prayer, asking "God... why is there suffering in the world?" God actually answers, explaining: "Day one of making the universe... I forgot a minus sig

This single-panel comic is titled "Execution Strategy: Try to say the most disconcerting thing possible before you die." A man with his head in a guillotine shouts "The cure for cancer is--" just as t