Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke An older person is nostalgically telling a younger person about the experience of going to Blockbuster Video. They describe walking around a store "absolutely brimming with all sorts of m

## The Joke A conversation takes place about the biblical prophecy of the end times. Someone quotes Matthew 25:13 — "Ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh" — meaning that

## The Joke A teacher introduces herself to a class: "Good morning, kids. I'm your new teacher, and I believe all children are naturally curious!" The kids cheer: "Yaayyy!" She continues: "And since

## The Joke An announcer declares: "And the winner of this year's Olympics is... Angela Lee!" The scene is depicted dramatically, with fire and intense colors. The next panel zooms out to reveal an o

## The Joke The comic retells "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" but from a morally confused perspective. A wolf goes out into a clearing every day and cries "Boy!" The other wolves come running but there's no

## The Joke A teacher (or professor) at the "Edgar Allan Poe School of English Composition" instructs students that "the introductory paragraph must start with an explanation of the existing evidence

## The Joke A grandchild complains to their grandparent: "Grandpa, I don't get it. You're all so much bigger and more knowledgeable than people 50-100 years ago, and yet all the time we're just busy

This comic riffs on the classic "genie grants wishes" setup, but reimagines it through the lens of modern technology and AI. A series of characters each express a wish to a genie about what technology

This comic retells the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, but filters it through modern cynicism about how humans respond to gifts and knowledge. Promethe

This comic plays on the concept of a "Mountweazel" -- a deliberately fictitious entry inserted into a reference work (like a dictionary or encyclopedia) as a copyright trap to catch plagiarists. The t

This comic features a dialogue about morality, death, and self-esteem that takes an absurd philosophical turn. A character asks God whether, if they were dead, everything would be "morally permissible

This comic subverts the classic "hey kid, wanna buy some drugs?" scenario. A stereotypical drug dealer approaches someone asking if they want to buy drugs. The person responds enthusiastically: "Oh, I

This comic tackles the philosophical problem of epistemology -- specifically, how can you ever truly know the contents of another person's mind? This is sometimes called the "problem of other minds" i

This comic explores the concept of spatial dimensions through a conversation between God and a person. God asks why the person wants space to be three-dimensional, and the person doesn't understand th

This is a concise, single-panel style comic (with a caption below) about linguists. Someone delivers tragic news: "It's... I'm so sorry. Your parents were on the road and a truck just ran them over."

This comic takes the familiar knock-knock joke format and places it in a post-apocalyptic setting. One survivor knocks on another's door: "Knock knock." / "Who's there?" / "Dave." / "Dave who?" / "Da

This single-panel comic shows a gravestone that reads: "Here lies Bob Jenkins. 'Beloved father and husband and murdered by Gary Schwartz who has a tiny dick and kicks puppies and lives at 611 Chestnut

This comic plays on the multiple meanings of the word "stud." In the first panel, a man brags that someone called him a "stud," clearly taking it as a sexual compliment. His partner immediately clarif

This comic begins with a couple in bed noticing their dog watching them have sex. The woman wonders what the dog is thinking, and the man suggests it's "probably so grossed out." The comic then cuts t

This comic is about the famous misquotation often attributed to Dostoevsky: "If God is dead, everything is permitted." In the first panel, a character states this quote and attributes it to Dostoevsky

This comic satirizes corporate bureaucracy. An employee named Sally is being made redundant (laid off), and her boss explains that her "severance package is directly proportional to the amount of time

This comic delivers a dark punchline about the danger of demanding certainty from predictive systems. A person asks a giant supercomputer, "Computer, do you think we'll have nuclear war in the next 50

This comic features a parent and child watching television. The parent complains about kids enjoying "garbage" TV, then boasts about their own superior imagination: "My imagination is so powerful... I

This comic tackles the concept of an "ideal marriage" through a conversation with God. A man prays asking what an ideal marriage looks like, and God answers "Three people, minimum." The man is shocked

This comic puts a sociological spin on the classic "yo mama" insult format. Instead of a crude one-liner, the insult delivered is an empathetic, academic analysis: "Your mama lacks the skill set to th

This comic features a superhero (resembling Batman) confronting a criminal, with a bystander (an older woman, possibly representing ordinary citizens or political philosophy) intervening. The bystande

This comic explores anxieties about AI and automation replacing human artists. A child asks their parent whether they should learn to draw, since by the time they grow up, machines will make "breakfas

## The Joke A person tells a chemist that they love something about chemists: with a single word the chemist has never heard before, they can get the chemist to visualize a complex lattice of carbon

## The Joke A character argues that the way we teach math is terrible because students need to be shown that math is relevant to real life. Another person pushes back, asking whether kids ever look a

## The Joke A student asks a meditation teacher how to find peace. The teacher explains it's about seeing your mind as a place and describes the process: you see your cluttered mind as a room, pick u

## The Joke A character observes that life is described in depressing terms: "You're born weak and frail, as time passes you grow stronger, beloved companions pop into existence and fill your body wi

## The Joke Two people are in visible pain, with splinters in their lips, asking "Why do we do this every year?!" They are sitting in front of a small wooden house. The caption reads: "Before gingerb

## The Joke The ghost of Hamlet's father appears, and Hamlet complains that his father didn't even give him a father-son talk while alive. The ghost retorts: "Does it strike you as the least bit weir

## The Joke A woman corrects someone about the pronunciation of JPEG, explaining: "Uh, sorry, no. It's Joint PHotographic Experts Group. PH, not P. It's pronounced 'JFEG.'" The caption reads: "Helen

## The Joke A man prays to God, asking how to make art knowing that billions of people are going in every direction, that it all seems meaningless. God responds: "Go ahead, Bob." God then explains th

## The Joke An elderly man sitting in a chair tells his grandchild about a prolonged disease he survived, explaining that he got "very comfortable talking about body stuff" because there are so many

## The Joke Two people stand near what appears to be a massive space elevator structure. One person, alarmed, shouts: "Wait... wait... you just assumed the cable mass was negligible?" The other calml

This comic plays on the misuse of base rate statistics to downplay risk. A woman tells a passerby that "BASE-JUMPING is NOT dangerous" because "a random person is TEN MILLION TIMES more likely to get

This comic riffs on the "coastline paradox," a real concept from fractal geometry. The coastline paradox states that the measured length of a coastline depends on the scale of measurement: as you use

This single-panel comic depicts what appears to be a dark, occult ritual. Hooded figures in red robes surround an altar where a leader figure raises a ceremonial dagger, with a pentagram visible on th

This lengthy comic explores artificial intelligence in an extended dialogue format. The premise involves a discussion about AI having access to the entire internet and what that means for its capabili

This comic is about "bandwidth" in the context of dirty talk during sex. In the first panel, a couple is in bed, with a caption explaining that the man died of "organ failure" and "catastrophic degrad

This comic is a meditation on the mathematical constant pi and why it appears in so many formulas that seem to have nothing to do with circles. Two characters discuss how pi shows up in equations acro

This comic is a Christmas-themed joke that plays on the "Santa isn't real" trope. In the first panel, Santa announces to children that he's got to deliver presents to all the boys and girls, with an o

This comic is a parody of the fairy tale "Rapunzel" (and its Disney adaptation "Tangled"). A knight arrives at a tower to rescue a princess, declaring he must climb her hair to reach her. The princess

This comic draws a parallel between historical moral panics about new technologies and contemporary ones. In the top half, set in the past, a person describes how when liquid optics (eyeglasses/specta

This comic personifies evolution or nature as frustrated with life on Earth. In the first panel, a winged figure (representing a higher power or nature) complains: "JEEZ, what's with life? It just kee

In this comic, a doctor delivers "good news" to a patient named Mister Jenkins, explaining that his suite of mental pathologies has been identified. However, the doctor reveals that the "treatment" in

This comic features a conversation where one character is told that he is boring -- not attractively stoic or mysterious, but genuinely dull. When he asks what he's supposed to do about it, his compan

This comic tackles impostor syndrome -- the feeling of being a fraud despite evidence of competence. A character lying in bed confesses that despite studying and working for decades, they still feel l