Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic is a four-panel strip about a trust fall exercise. In the first panel, a woman tells a man to be ready to catch her as she falls back, instructing him to put his arms low. In th

## The Joke A witch gives a woman a "magical bag," telling her that whenever she finds herself in difficulty, she should reach into the bag and she will find what she needs. The woman is skeptical bu

## The Joke A group of scientists discuss the dangers of creating artificial intelligence. One raises the worry about AI becoming self-aware and turning against humanity. Another dismisses this, argu

## The Joke A scientist announces that he has created artificial general intelligence and tasks the AI with reading all human knowledge in order to figure out how to make humans live forever. The AI

## The Joke The comic opens with a "fun fact" stating that a decent number of Biblical literalists have not actually read the Bible, and that this presents an opportunity. A man then tests this by as

## The Joke The comic presents "The Life Cycle of Groups" in four stages. In Step 1, a person enthusiastically declares they are going to form a group to do good things. In Step 2, a leader addresses

## The Joke A customer calls a service line and is told that for their convenience, hold music has been replaced with the sound of goats in pain. The customer is appalled as horrible goat screaming n

## The Joke A robot stands on a comedy club stage performing standup. Its routine goes: "Why is cat? Cat consumes household food, but is not itself food. Why is cat?" The caption below reads: "Robot

## The Joke The comic is set at the "Annual Flower-Fancier Get Together XXXVIII" (the 38th annual gathering). A woman at the event is admiring a man's shirt, noting "That's a real tight tulip-print s

## The Joke The comic takes place in Heaven, where angels are having a conversation. One angel feels like things are "really boring up here," and the others agree ("So no good"). They decide they nee

## The Joke The comic is titled "Know Your Numbers" and presents a four-quadrant educational chart, styled like a classroom chalkboard. The first two quadrants are legitimate math categories: "Ration

## The Joke The comic presents four panels, each showing a person making a catastrophically bad decision by trying to solve a problem with the very thing that is causing the problem. A drowning perso

## The Joke A child asks his father, "Dad, what's 'sodomy'?" The father, looking stern, declares it is "a very bad thing" and defines it as "whenever you put your genitals somewhere that is unnatural

## The Joke A child is sitting under what appears to be a bed or a bunk, reading a note aloud: "I'll be back for the rest tomorrow." The caption below reads: "I'm no longer allowed to write the Tooth

## The Joke In the first panel, an impassioned figure (presumably an engineer or scientist) declares that engineers have great souls and demands that they be treated like artists, like poets -- insis

## The Joke The comic is structured as an "expectation vs. reality" joke about giving talks or presentations. The first panel, labeled "How you plan to end talks," shows a confident speaker deliverin

## The Joke A group of friends tell their friend Dave that they have all chipped in to get him a service dog to help him "deal with his problem." Dave, confused, asks "What? What problem?" The punchl

## The Joke A person confronts Jesus, asking if the practice of giving things up for Lent is just God demanding arbitrary sacrifices for no good reason. Jesus responds that He cannot even stop people

## The Joke In a post-apocalyptic setting, a group of human survivors cowers behind rubble as robots have risen up to destroy civilization. One survivor explains the situation: "The robots have risen

## The Joke A woman asks a bearded man how he is so prolific and gets so much done. He explains that his phone is "coated in dermotoxic poison, which discourages me from checking email." The woman, i

## The Joke A couple is in bed, and one partner announces that before they go to sleep, they need to tell the other something: "I'm renting." The other asks, confused, "You want... yes, I'm renting i

## The Joke Two scientists are excited about a discovery: they have found species of "acid-loving bacteria." One exclaims "This is incredible!" and the other eagerly says "Let me see!" The final pane

## The Joke The comic is structured as a movie pitch meeting. A man enthusiastically describes a film concept: "It's the movie of the decade, based on fantastical medieval tales by Cynewulf the poet.

## The Joke A tech company executive (resembling a stereotypical Silicon Valley figure) is pitching an algorithm that supposedly predicts what people want to watch before they know it themselves. A c

## The Joke A man is praying to God, confessing that he has encoded all of his private information -- presumably embarrassing secrets, personal data, and sensitive material -- in a cloud-based system

## The Joke A farmer is confronted by someone who asks what he is doing to a cow. The farmer explains that he is squeezing the cow's nipples to "take your milk." When asked "what?!", he elaborates on

## The Joke The comic retells the legend of the Sword in the Stone, where pulling a magical sword from a stone proves one's right to be King of England. A character pulls the sword free and triumphan

## The Joke The comic is set at the "Institute for Statistical Villainy," where a supervillain addresses an audience of costumed villains. He opens with a surprisingly cogent philosophical observatio

## The Joke This is a special BAHFest (Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival) edition comic, which presents an intentionally absurd pseudo-scientific hypothesis in an academic format. The comic features a l

## The Joke A mother calls her daughter a "bitch." When the daughter protests ("What did you say to me?"), the mother doubles down, declaring that she is reclaiming "bitch" as a positive term. The da

## The Joke A caveman-era father tells his family about a plant growing on their land. He explains that the bulb is bitter, but they must not eat the leaves, because they will go hungry and sick when

## The Joke Two people are discussing why so many people believed Freudian psychology. One character explains the appeal: Freudian theory tells you that deep down, humans are all monsters -- that ben

## The Joke A woman is praying to God, asking why he made humans. God responds that he had already made several other beings -- beings who could read minds, beings who could move faster than light, a

## The Joke A woman asks a man whether he thinks reality is real, or if all of our sensations are merely produced by our brains, with the "true nature" of reality being beyond human access. The man d

## The Joke A person lies on a therapist's couch, lamenting: "I feel like to fit in I need more student politics otherwise I'm not fighting against entrenched power." The therapist-like figure respon

## The Joke A person is looking at a calculator and exclaims: "God, how come the square root of two has infinite decimal length?" Someone else shows them a calculator and says, "Look, here's pi!" The

## The Joke A young girl stands between her two parents, passionately explaining: "It's just that's what they have to do in outer space and I wanted to be like Sally Ride and Eileen Collins and Svetl

## The Joke A mugger wearing a ski mask demands "Open up your wallet!" The victim complies, and the mugger starts going through it -- only to be horrified by what he finds. "Jeeeeezus, there are like

## The Joke A parent explains their approach to socializing their child: "I want my kids to go to school so they can be properly socialized." When asked what kind of school, they say "By high school.

## The Joke A parent is excited to finally be ahead on work, leaving a day off to spend quality time with their daughter. However, the quality time quickly devolves into typical chaotic kid behavior.

## The Joke The comic is titled "Never try bondage with a computer scientist." A woman in lingerie stands in a bedroom scene, apparently ready for some kinky roleplay. The computer scientist partner,

## The Joke A banner at the top reads "Why do 98% of math teachers do this?" A math teacher is shown explaining arithmetic operations to students in a very clear, intuitive way: addition is putting t

## The Joke A father is exercising and mutters to himself that "exercise is a real pain in the ass." His young son overhears and says "What?" The father, embarrassed, quickly explains that it was "ju

## The Joke A mysterious figure (possibly a wizard or mad scientist) confronts someone, telling them "I am not going to eat my vegetables." The figure responds with a threat: they will be sprayed wit

## The Joke Two astronauts are standing on the surface of Mars, having apparently discovered alien civilization (structures are visible in the background). One astronaut exclaims "My God, is that...

## The Joke A man proposes to a woman, saying he is "prepared to marry, have children, and grow old together, but only if we can do it ironically." She responds "Eh, okay." What follows is a montage

## The Joke Two scientists are excitedly discussing something. One describes it as "an object that obeys quantum mechanical laws, and the very nature of physics prevents people from remotely accessin

## The Joke The comic retells the story of the Garden of Eden with a twist. The serpent tempts Eve (or possibly Adam -- the figure in the garden) to eat the apple, saying "Ahhhhhhh, eat the aaaaaple.

## The Joke An older man is giving a speech, declaring that "humans weren't meant to live like this" -- that they should not be "sitting in cubicles, tapping away on plastic boards, making dollar bil

## The Joke A student asks a professor, "Professor, why are they called irrational numbers?" The professor responds with "Have you ever tried talking to one?" When the student says "What? Here, hold