Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic plays on the science fiction trope of the Borg from Star Trek -- a collective that forcibly assimilates individuals -- but reimagines it as an office workplace scenario. In the first panel

This comic delivers a simple but effective joke about the commercialization of virtual reality technology. In the first panel, a person stands at a podium preparing to give a presentation, clearing t

This comic parodies the romanticized notion of knightly quests by filtering it through modern existential malaise. In the first panel, a child excitedly spots a knight: "Oh wow! A knight! Are you on

This comic takes aim at exploitative internship practices. A boss approaches an employee named Stan and asks if he'd like to "intern here over the summer." Stan points out the obvious problem: he alre

This comic questions the popular claim that humans are uniquely or naturally curious, suggesting it might be a self-serving narrative. In the first panel, a human tells an alien: "I think what makes

This comic plays on the concept of fortune cookies and the TV show "Survivor." A woman asks a fortune teller how fortune telling works. The fortune teller explains that she tells clients vague things

This comic explains the economic concept of monopsony -- a market condition where there is only one buyer (as opposed to a monopoly, where there is only one seller). A character smugly tells someone "

This comic satirizes the gap between romantic narrative expectations and mundane reality. A person approaches a wise old sage on a mountaintop and says they've been "chosen to save the world" and asks

This comic features two people outdoors who encounter an old, pleasant-smelling building. One character sniffs and detects "the mellow odor of beautiful old books" -- suggesting a library cellar. They

This comic depicts a person lying in bed at 3 AM, unable to sleep, complaining to their own brain (drawn as a literal cartoon brain sitting on the pillow): "God, it's 3AM and my stupid brain chemicals

This comic shows a couple in bed at night. One partner hears a groaning sound from the attic ("OOOOO") and panics: "Oh my god, did you hear that? Groaning from the attic!" The other partner realizes

This comic riffs on the Medusa myth. A figure (resembling Medusa or a similar mythological being) dramatically announces a curse: "Tremble! I shall tell you the secret! I will wash your arms into ston

This comic is captioned "Top Parenting Lie This Year: Clown 'noses' are actually egg sacs." A parent and child are at what appears to be a circus or carnival, looking at a large, somewhat unsettling

This comic addresses the question of why women are attracted to vampires in fiction. One character suggests it's because women "secretly want to be controlled by powerful men," offering a sexist expla

This comic is a joke about Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment, "Schrodinger's Cat," in which a cat inside a sealed box exists in a quantum superposition of being both alive and dead until o

This comic presents a series of "facts" about pumpkin spice in the style of informational panels. The first fact states: "Pumpkin spice is just a spice mix used for pumpkin pie. It has no historical r

This comic features a woman who says she wants to talk about how "babies are natural scientists." A man responds enthusiastically: "Because babies are so curious?" She says "Yeah..." but then hesitat

In this comic, a couple is sitting on a couch when the man enthusiastically proposes a surveillance dystopia as if it were a consumer convenience. He suggests it would be cool if computers listened to

This comic shows two men having a conversation. One asks about plans for next year. The other says: "I have plans. You know, it's gonna be average." His friend asks: "What are you doing?" The planner

This comic plays on the common political cliche "This is just like 1984," which typically refers to George Orwell's dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" about authoritarian surveillance and thought

This comic is a fairy tale parody of the classic "knight rescues the princess from the tower" trope. A knight arrives at a tower announcing he has come to rescue a princess, but she immediately challe

This comic is a post-coital bedroom scene where one partner asks the classic question "Be honest -- was it good for you?" The other partner responds: "Well, to be clear, I don't take a prescriptivist

This comic is a Halloween-themed strip. A child in a costume goes trick-or-treating and encounters a figure at the door who announces: "I'm your grandmother's ghost from beyond the grave! Remember tha

This comic features a superhero parody. A hero tells a villain to "Stop, thief!" and the thief asks "What are you?" The hero responds: "Invincible." When pressed, he clarifies: "Statistically invincib

This comic presents what appears to be a factual educational statement at the top: "Fun fact: anything that is true of humans is also true of humans with a given profession." Below, one woman says to

This comic depicts an interrogation or espionage scenario. A man declares "I'll never reveal the launch codes! Never!" His captors respond with escalating threats. First, they show him a sex tape of

This comic draws a parallel between two types of people who share similar rhetorical techniques but exist on opposite ends of a political spectrum. The first panel describes how "many a woman's life

This is a simple two-panel comic about making yeast bread. A man is shown kneading dough while narrating in dramatic, existential terms: "Behold! It finds itself in a world of potential and plenty, on

This comic addresses the complaint that "people perceive doctors as being too pushy and impersonal." The first panel presents a proposed solution: doctors should take time and care with patients, look

In this comic, a sinister-looking figure (perhaps God, or a game-show host of fate) tells a group of children to "choose which of your children will live and which will die." One child, Billy, dies.

A robed figure stands atop a mountain, lamenting: "I'm sick of being a prophet. I don't want to tell people how to live. One day I'll just select some kid, no special birth or anything, to go have fun

Titled "How AI Reporting Works," this comic depicts a person commanding a computer: "Okay computer! Having scanned all of human literature, make a novel, extraordinary assertion!" The computer respon

A person asks God: "God, why is the universe so simple at the fundamental level?" God replies: "I'm a huge minimalist." The person then probes further, noting that God has "a huge number of different

Aliens arrive on Earth announcing: "We have come to speak with you. We know all languages of your civilization and are contacting everyone on your beautiful planet." Humans react: "How? You already kn

One person tells another: "Also, did you know that if you flip three coins three times, the fourth flip HAS to be heads?" The other person, wide-eyed, responds: "No it... well... I... okay MAYBE." Be

A person in what appears to be a therapy or counseling setting says to another: "Techno, do you really feel love, or are you just using a kind of modeling, using training data, and recognizing pattern

A bearded man asks a group of friends: "Hey everyone! Wanna sit around being frightened and disgusted for 40 minutes tonight?" They respond: "Sure!" "Yeah!" But one person adds: "Could we also be horn

A man tells a woman: "He was totally wrong in that post and so I said 'Dunning-Kruger Effect.'" The woman asks: "How good is the evidence for that effect?" The man admits: "I didn't read that part of

A computer scientist, an algebraic structures theorist, and a geometer walk into a coffee shop. As the caffeine kicks in, they get into an argument about whose field "requires the most imagination."

This comic depicts a conversation between God and a woman about the creation of the universe. God explains that the inspiration for creating the universe came from a movie called "Star Wars." The woma

This comic plays on the common pop-psychology concept of the "reptile brain" -- the idea that humans have a primitive, lizard-like part of the brain responsible for base instincts and emotional reacti

This comic features a person praying to God about free will, asking if humans truly have it. God confirms that humans do have free will, but delivers the catch: humans are actually the only creatures

This comic is about dating "red flags." A woman tells her friend about a second date with a new guy, describing it as "awesome" except that "he threw up a lot of red flags." Her friend asks for clarif

This comic features aliens observing and commenting on human behavior. One alien notes that humans behave as though they have conscious, thoughtful possession of free will, but that you can manipulate

This comic explores the philosophical problem of how an immaterial soul could be tempted by material things. A woman asks a man if he believes in an immaterial soul, and he confirms he does. She then

This is a single-panel comic showing an alien flying saucer firing a destructive beam at the Earth. The alien narrates: "Nobody knows what internal mechanism produces airplanes, but if we lesion this

This comic plays on the question "Is the brain a computer?" A woman asks a man this question, and he answers "Sure, and I can prove it." He then pulls out a floppy disk and says he is going to install

This comic features an alien (a recurring SMBC character) marveling at a human ability. The alien explains that "the good news" is that humans can detect diagonal lines in any orientation, and that th

This comic depicts a Supreme Court-style judicial scene. A judge announces that "the judicial decision is about to come down" and it looks like the vote has gone against one party's position. The losi

## The Joke In this comic, a character (likely a child) asks why their fingers get pruney in the bath. The parent or adult gives a scientific explanation — that fingers wrinkle in water as an evoluti