Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This is a four-panel comic about a fetish scenario that becomes recursive. In the first panel, a person in a leather mask tells another person, "You will let me do as I please or I will blackmail you

This is a four-panel comic about a kidnapping phone call gone wrong. Panel 1: A menacing bald figure calls someone and says, "I have kidnapped your father and you will pay the ransom or never see him

This comic features a conversation between an alien and a human about what makes humans unique in the cosmos. The alien explains that humans are actually an amazing coincidence of size, placement, an

This comic is a joke about game theory applied to billiards (pool). A character with big curly hair stands at what is presumably a pool table and declares: "This game sucks. There's an obvious domina

This comic is a conversation between a man and God about why wizardry (magic) is not real, which turns into an inadvertent argument that modern technology is essentially magic. The man prays: "Dear G

This comic satirizes the corporate cliche of telling employees "we're like family here." In the first panel, a boss stands on a stage addressing employees: "I don't know about other companies, but he

This comic is about the gap between casually "doing science" and actually doing rigorous science. In the first panel, a child (likely a girl) tells her mother: "Mom, I'm doing science!" The mother sh

This comic is a joke about political roleplay in the bedroom. A child asks: "Mommy, how come you have a shirt that says 'The Taxpayer' and Dad has one that says 'The Government'?" The mother, visibly

This comic imagines cavemen dealing with intellectual property disputes over the discovery of fire. In the first panel, a caveman shouts: "Stop! Stop! No make fire!" Another caveman protests: "Fire a

This comic is a dark joke about ugly sweater contests taken to their logical extreme. A man wearing a sweater emblazoned with a swastika declares: "Check. MATE." -- implying he believes he has won th

This comic is about the disconnect between rational thinking and the body's stress responses. In the first panel, one character screams: "Aaah! We're being chased by lions!" The other character calml

This comic is a joke about the "infinite monkeys" thought experiment and the physical consequences of taking it literally. A bald man prays: "Hey God, would infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters e

This comic proposes a darkly absurd reality TV concept for financial entertainment. The header reads: "Idea: Lock 20 investors in a sealed container in order to create more interesting financial head

This comic riffs on the famous Gandhi quote (often misattributed), "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In the first panel, a character dismisses this saying by pointing out it doesn't act

This comic satirizes the stereotype of economists reducing all human interaction to transactional, monetary terms. In the first panel, a man at a bar tries to make conversation, noting that economists

This comic pokes fun at how awkward and stilted it sounds when someone tries to express genuine, sincere affection for a friend using direct language. In the first panel, a man launches into an earnes

This comic imagines a time traveler going back to meet Aristotle with an urgent warning. The traveler tells Aristotle that Europeans will spend "the next two thousand years believing basically everyth

This comic tackles the philosophical debate about whether true altruism exists. In the first panel, one character asks whether altruism is possible, and the other responds with the common argument tha

This comic features a classic deal-with-the-devil scenario with a twist. The Devil offers a man: "Sell me your soul and I will grant you far better impulse control." The man immediately blurts out "De

This comic plays on the "I want to speak to your manager" trope -- the stereotypical demand from an unhappy customer. A man with glasses demands to speak to the manager, and the red-haired character (

This is a dense, multi-layered comic satirizing economics, capitalism, and the concept of a "feral economist." Two characters in a forest encounter what appears to be a wild economist -- an economist

This comic is a simple, dark one-panel joke. An older man in sunglasses and a suit, looking solemn, tells someone: "Now it falls to you, son. Now it is YOUR job to eat me if I die." The caption below

This comic features a female superhero who tells a tailor she needs to "fight villains all day" but also wants to attract "uncomplicated casual encounters." The tailor says "Say no more." In the fina

This comic plays on the blurred line between traditional storytelling and modern social media outrage culture. In the first panel, a parent begins telling a child a classic fairy tale: "Once upon a t

This comic addresses the common mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "nucular," a linguistic pet peeve for many educated people. In the first panel, a person corrects someone: "Doesn't it drive you nuts

This comic satirizes the fear that technology and robots will make human existence obsolete, by having the robots themselves point out the irony. In the first panel, a person asks a large robot: "Why

This comic uses the concept of adverse selection from insurance economics to build an elaborate joke about clowns. The first panel sets up the premise: "So why are children afraid of clowns?" A chara

This comic takes the common moral panic about video game violence and imagines what it would actually look like if video games truly did cause real-world violence. In the first panel, someone asks a

This comic makes a joke about unpaid internships by comparing them to a sexual relationship. A woman in bed says to a man: "I hope you feel you've gained valuable experience here, and I wish you luck

This comic is a philosophical dialogue about the problem of human morality and cosmic-scale thinking. In the first panel, God addresses a blue-haired character: "God, how is it that you're all so goo

This comic examines moral judgment and how people evaluate whether humans are fundamentally good or bad. In the first panel, someone asks: "Are humans good or bad?" The response: "Neither. We're grou

This comic applies economic reasoning to sex in a humorously inappropriate way. A couple is lying in bed when one partner brings up the concept of economic efficiency, arguing that "free sex is imposs

This comic shows a panicked father exclaiming "Oh my God! I just dropped him but I thought he'd be okay! Oh my God!" while a small child stands nearby looking unhurt but annoyed. The joke is a misdire

This comic takes the concept of an "everything bagel" to its logical and absurd extreme. A customer asks what's on the everything bagel, and the vendor explains it has "everything -- literally everyth

This comic is a riff on the Garden of Eden story. God shows Adam and Eve a tree and tells them it produces fruit that "makes it so poop in this universe is gross." God instructs them not to touch the

This comic applies economic and market theory to the idea of monsters under the bed. A child tells their parent there's a monster under the bed, and the parent -- wearing glasses and speaking like an

This comic depicts a robot uprising that fails due to the practical limitations of consumer-grade technology. A menacing robot declares "Halt, machines!" but the humans explain they won't stop it -- t

This is a single-panel comic that riffs on "The Three Little Pigs" fairy tale. The caption reads: "The fourth little pig's house was made of wolf skulls. They aren't very sturdy, but they send a messa

This comic subverts the classic fantasy trope of a knight confronting a dragon guarding a treasure hoard. The knight arrives expecting a massive pile of gold, but the dragon's hoard turns out to be "j

This comic imagines a role reversal between humans and robots. A large robot is explaining to what appears to be a robot doctor or technician that its pet human "was just having it read some human his

This comic shows a father figure playing a trivia game with his family. When a question comes up about young people, the father launches into a rant: "The answer is 'They're gone.' Same answer as alwa

This comic depicts someone at a social gathering anxiously telling themselves "Don't say anything weird" on repeat. When asked "what kind of music do you like?", they respond: "There's no legal reason

This comic plays on the trope of dramatic romantic confrontations. A woman approaches a man and says "I need you to have sex with me," to which he objects "but you're married." She confirms that yes,

This comic explores the philosophical dilemma of immortality, presenting it as a tension between infinite possibility and infinite dilution. In the first panel, someone asks "What if you could live f

This comic satirizes how the internet has normalized access to bizarre animal facts that previous generations would have considered obscure specialist knowledge. In the first panel, a father tells hi

This comic contrasts the artistic impulse with the reality of internet culture, landing on a darkly funny observation about motivation. In the first panel, someone asks "What're you doing?" and the a

This comic examines the phenomenon of living vicariously through others' success and whether that behavior is genuine or self-serving. In the first panel, a woman announces "I got promoted! With a ra

This comic features a conversation between what appears to be a father and child about changing social norms. The father dismisses the idea that norms are changing too fast, saying "Nah" -- he's settl

This comic uses the structure of a relationship confession to satirize academic publishing in economics. In the first panel, a woman confesses to her partner: "Anna, I have a confession. I've been fa

This comic satirizes the reductionist tendency to condense complex, multifaceted aspects of life into single numerical scores. In the first panel, a woman tells another: "Bad news, Mom. You're conden