Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A character (resembling a mad scientist) is caught using a time machine again. He explains he's booking a huge stone monument in the geological past to match twentieth-century iconography

## The Joke A group of people are walking and talking, and one of them declares: "Of course it's pronounced 'JIF.' It's spelled J-I-F. JPEG Interchange Format. A rarely used image compression format

## The Joke A woman passionately declares that her whole life she's wanted to understand what consciousness is. Now that we can build artificial neural networks, she says, we can finally get an answe

## The Joke A man in red (evoking an older mentor figure) stands under a starry sky and tells a younger person: "Ambition, my boy. Ambition above all. That has been my North Star." The younger person

## The Joke A politician stands at a podium and declares: "I want my kids taught about the past EXACTLY AS IT HAPPENED in a way that also mythologizes this country's achievements in particular while

## The Joke An alien appears on a screen and tells a human: "We will not contact your species nor will we neglect a few of you." The human protests that they're hard to study, but the alien explains

## The Joke An older man explains his philosophy to a younger person: everything bad in your life, every experience that hurts, can be reframed as a measure of wisdom. "The darker life appears, the b

This comic is a nostalgic monologue by an older man recounting to a child what media consumption was like in "the old days." He describes the elaborate, multi-step process of how video content used to

This comic features a person screaming "AAAAAAAAA" in the first panel in what appears to be distress or existential anguish. In the second panel, another person observes, "I see you're constantly scre

This comic plays on the time-travel trope where someone comes from the future to warn a person about their destiny. A visitor tells a young man, "I'm from the future. Listen, in 20 years you become a

This comic is a parody of Indiana Jones-style adventure films. We see explorers entering what appears to be an ancient tomb, but instead of a typical ancient civilization's burial site, the caption re

This comic addresses the popular anti-intellectual refrain "do your own research." In the first panel, someone is being told, "And that's why I'm worried," to which a bearded man dismisses it with "Yo

This comic satirizes longtermism, the philosophical position that we should prioritize the far future above present concerns. A character asks what longtermists think we should give people in the dist

This comic features a character lying on a therapist's couch saying, "I guess I'm just depressed about my precarious position." When the therapist asks, "What do you mean?", the patient explains: "Thi

This comic tackles philosophical determinism -- the idea that all events, including human actions, are determined by prior causes and that free will is an illusion. A criminal, caught in the act, prot

This comic shows a professor standing at a chalkboard with physics diagrams (vectors, trajectories, and equations), declaring: "Now, let's use this utterly contrived situation that will never occur in

This comic is formatted as a mock self-help infographic titled "Productivity Tips," offering satirical advice that subverts the typical productivity guru genre. The tips include suggestions like: "Fi

This comic is a riff on the famous scene from Homer's *Odyssey* in which Odysseus blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus and then escapes by telling the Cyclops his name is "Nobody" (Greek: "Outis"). When Poly

In this comic, a woman tells her date that she has something to confess before they go back to his place. The man braces himself, expecting some kind of dark secret. She then reveals that she has "goo

This comic satirizes the way stress has become so normalized in modern life that it has essentially become the baseline expectation. A patient tells the doctor she has been feeling stressed lately, an

This comic follows a figure in a noir-style setting who narrates how he has been kicked out of every organized religion and social movement for his "strange beliefs." He has been called a monster, a f

This comic tackles the philosophical horror of artificial consciousness. Scientists celebrate that their AI has crossed the threshold of consciousness, but then realize it hit that critical point "une

This comic retells the myth of King Midas, who wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. In the original myth, Midas realizes his gift is a curse when he can no longer eat, drink, or embra

This comic explores the concept of the multiverse through the lens of relationships. Scientists discover that across the quantum multiverse -- every possible branch of reality -- a particular woman ap

In this comic, a woman catches a man named Ted rolling around in dusty cobwebs and asks why. He defensively fires back: "You're so great, how do you turbocharge and rename ectoderm-derived keratinized

This comic satirizes the impossibility of choosing a restaurant (or any dinner option) as a family or group. A woman proposes an elaborate formal process: each family member must "submit a bid express

This comic features a large robot (or AI) confronting a human. The robot declares "You may be smarter than me, but can you compose a perfect sonnet or a novel that makes me think about the meaning of

This comic depicts Jesus Christ emerging from his tomb after the Crucifixion, only to be met by a shocked onlooker who exclaims: "Holy crap! You were literally crucified and DIED and you took three da

This comic shows the red-bearded SMBC author-avatar character (representing Zach Weinersmith) delivering what he apparently considers a relatable observation: "Cats are smaller than dogs on average an

This comic plays out in six panels showing a man's gradual and involuntary transformation into a stereotypical dad. In the first panel, he's walking along whistling when he suddenly notices: "What the

This comic is split into two panels. The top panel shows a wild-eyed, shirtless content creator shouting into a camera: "Welcome to Day 8 of the Bean Challenge where I see if I can eat 83 cans of bean

This comic presents the classic theological problem of theodicy -- "why do bad things happen to good people?" -- but filtered through an alien conquest scenario. A human kneels in prayer, asking: "Dea

This comic depicts a medical consultation in which every question the doctor asks receives an answer that sounds concerning in one context but impressive in another. The doctor asks: "Do you exercise

This comic shows a student asking a teacher: "Teacher, how do you pronounce 'O-U-G-H'?" The teacher responds with a lengthy explanation: "You have to know what's before it. It could be cough, bough, t

This comic contrasts science fiction with reality in two panels. The top panel, labeled "In Sci Fi," shows a spaceship crew receiving their rations: "Here are your protein cylinders, crew." One crew m

This comic features two women on what appears to be a date. One says: "I should tell you, I'm very bad with social cues." The other responds sympathetically: "Oh, that must be hard." But the first wom

This comic is divided into two time periods. The top half, labeled "High School," shows two girls looking at a brooding, dark-haired young man. One says: "Wow, Gary's so dark and brooding. So MYSTERIO

This comic takes place at "The Annual Colloquium of Evil Philosophers," where a vampire-like philosopher presents John Rawls' famous "veil of ignorance" thought experiment to an audience of villains.

This comic riffs on the famous question from the graphic novel "Watchmen" by Alan Moore: "Who watches the Watchmen?" (originally from the Latin phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"). The phrase add

This comic depicts a therapy session that hasn't actually begun yet. A therapist asks her patient, "Aha... and how do the scornful stares from strangers make you feel?" The bearded patient responds, c

This comic is a linguistics joke about the word "immediately." A professor-like figure explains the etymological fun fact that "immediately" derives from the roots "im-" (meaning "not") and "mediate"

This comic shows two aliens observing a human who announces, "I will now enact the rite of beginning a diet by gorging myself on the worst quality of fried trash-foods." One alien comments admiringly,

This comic shows a group of people looking up at a giant screen or sky displaying the message: "HOLY LIVING S**T. YOU GUYS, THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE COOPERATIVE MODE. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" The capti

This comic shows two people standing outside a truck stop at night. One person says to the other: "Look, everyone figured it out a long time ago. You don't eat, you're scared of garlic fries, you're o

This comic is an epic, cosmic narrative told across many panels about the long-term fate of the universe and humanity's place in it. It begins with someone telling a story: the universe will expand un

This comic features a conversation between a human and a robot. The human asks, "Robot, can you make me happy?" The robot replies with a philosophical observation: "Every human has at least one source

This comic is titled "Somewhere in a Medieval Medical Text" and describes an elaborate, absurd medieval medical remedy. The text describes a procedure involving cheese buried beneath a full moon, plac

## The Joke A man asks whether the old English word "post" in "postman" could mean something other than "mail" — specifically, he raises the possibility that it could mean "after man," as the Latin p

## The Joke A child asks their father why he lives the way he does — implying poverty or an austere lifestyle. The father explains that he does it because he wants his child to have all the things he

## The Joke A robed figure welcomes a congregation to "Generic Temple" and proceeds to lay out the basic operating mechanics of organized religion in the most transparent, clinical terms possible. Th