Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A woman asks a man what he is doing, and he replies that he is "waxing my entire body for you." She coos approvingly. In the next panel (labeled "Later"), the man appears covered head-to-

## The Joke The comic presents a 2x2 grid of conspiracy theories, each following the same format: "[Type] conspiracy theory: You're in the pocket of Big Pharma!" The four variants are: Regular Conspi

## The Joke A woman asks why everyone is so opposed to progress, arguing that it is brilliant -- with enough control over the economy, we can cure cancer. A man agrees enthusiastically, calling it am

## The Joke The comic shows Winnie the Pooh greeting Christopher Robin at his door, exclaiming: "Christopher Robin! Welcome to-- Christ Jesus, you were wearing shorts out there? You'll be exsanguinat

## The Joke The comic depicts humanity encountering a God-like computer (or God communicating through a computer terminal) that makes a series of increasingly demanding and paradoxical requests. God'

## The Joke The comic is set "40 million years ago" and shows a small prehistoric cat-like creature encountering a large, terrifying predator (which appears to be some kind of prehistoric fish or rep

## The Joke The comic reimagines the tragic ending of Shakespeare's *Romeo and Juliet*. In the original play, Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear dead; Romeo, believing she has truly died, ki

## The Joke The comic plays on the classic "genie grants three wishes" setup. A man tells a genie he has always wanted to fly like a bird soaring over the hills. The genie, rather than granting this

## The Joke The comic presents a graph plotting "Expected Staying Power During Next Sexual Encounter" on the Y-axis against "Current Desire for Sex" on the X-axis. The curve shows an exponential rela

## The Joke Two characters discuss the poem "Ozymandias" by Shelley. One explains that it is a meditation on human life beyond its expiration -- describing a fallen statue of a once-powerful king, me

## The Joke A woman confronts a man in bed during a thunderstorm, saying she is starting to think he is not actually the God of Thunder. He asks "What?" and she points out that he always covers his e

## The Joke The comic presents a movie pitch: "A thriller about an ex-marine turned top secret superspy for the CIA, named Agent David Nudes." In the scene below, a military officer reports to a gene

## The Joke The comic opens with a narration explaining that fashion choices go through a cycle: the older generation finds them shocking, then they become mainstream, then the younger generation rej

## The Joke The comic shows a man interacting with a computer screen that displays a series of questions in the style of a CAPTCHA or website verification prompt. First it asks "Are you a robot?" wit

## The Joke A woman asks a bald man with glasses whether he believes in the "backfire effect" -- the psychological phenomenon where people who are presented with evidence contradicting their beliefs

## The Joke The comic shows a conversation between two people about science fiction. One person lists several classic sci-fi tropes -- "lots of nerds thinking about the future," mentions of rocketry

## The Joke Steve's friend confesses that he has never sent nude photos. Instead, what he has been sending are "just different close-ups of my fingers, occasionally the crook of my elbow." When his f

## The Joke Two people are watching what appears to be a reality-TV-style scenario on a monitor. One of them excitedly narrates that "the utilitarians are emerging, bathed in the blood of the virtue

## The Joke A person is watching the news and thinks "God, the news is depressing." They resolve to take action: "I can't just keep quiet! I've got to stand up and do something!" In the next panel, t

## The Joke A dog and a duck are having a philosophical conversation by a pond. The dog asks whether the duck thinks human laws are "just," and the duck replies that of course they are -- "they're pr

## The Joke A professor (identified in the caption as Professor Ehrman) is giving a lecture in which he explains the etymology of "Christ": it comes from the Greek word "Christos," meaning "anointed

## The Joke A woman tells a man that she went massively into debt to build a machine that generates holographic numbers and equations, and she wants to surprise her physicist colleagues. She asks "Wh

## The Joke Two people are having a conversation under a starry sky. One asks: "Do you think other people have real feelings and desires, and complex internal worlds?" The other replies: "Any minute

## The Joke A human asks a bat: "Do you think a human can ever really know what it's like to be a bat?" The bat responds with its own version of the question: "Look, it is weird being a bat. You hang

## The Joke A speaker at what appears to be a tech conference or company presentation begins by telling the audience they are going to see "the scariest part of the future" and asks them to "see wher

## The Joke A man returns home announcing "Heee, I'm back, Dad!" His father greets him with: "All those years you were gone, did you learn anything? Well, look at the house!" The implication is that

## The Joke A medieval-looking warrior announces "I'm gonna kill someone on the road today!" as he gets into his car, setting up the expectation that he's about to commit murder. In the next panels,

## The Joke The comic begins with someone explaining how machine learning algorithms work: they learn from examples, but inevitably pick up biases from their training data (like learning from racists

## The Joke A boss calls an employee named Stuart into his office, and Stuart nervously asks "Oh God, are you firing me?" The boss replies "Hahaha, no, no we're not." In the next panel, the boss expl

## The Joke The comic is titled "Biology-Inspired Prank #97691" and the instructions read: "Cover your body with a thin layer of glue, go out in public, and molt." The panel shows a person standing i

## The Joke A pirate captain presents what he calls "the greatest treasure of all" to his crew. When opened, the treasure chest reveals... a friend, who declares "There be only a mirror" (implying th

## The Joke The comic is titled "Thing I Hate: Conflating Obnoxiousness with Honesty." A bearded man proudly announces "My blog posts piss off BOTH sides," and his friend responds "You must be doing

## The Joke A parent tells their child "No more video games! They cause aggression!" The child retorts that back in the parent's day, they played "extremely violent fighting games and shooters while

## The Joke The comic is titled "Alternative Non-Spherical Earth Theories" and presents a table of alternative Earth shapes, each with a "Theory," "Pro," and "Con" column. The shapes include: Mobius

## The Joke One scientist asks another "What are you doing?" The second scientist replies "Adding human-type pain receptors to this trout." When asked why, he explains: "Because philosophy has gotten

## The Joke The comic presents a graph titled "The Cinnamon Roll Delta Function," plotting tastiness against quality of ingredients. The joke is that cinnamon rolls have an extremely narrow spike of

## The Joke The comic shows a self-help book cover with the large title "YOU" and a generic image of a smiling blonde woman. The text reads: "Are sexually attractive and very smart, even though those

## The Joke The comic features a character who has created a new piece of software that tells him what he wants. He explains that it works by looking at his previous actions, then determining what hi

## The Joke The comic shows two characters discussing a business idea. One enthusiastically says, "It's genius! We start a flour mill designed so that it maximizes utility!" The other responds dismis

## The Joke The comic shows a scientist standing at the edge of a melting landscape, arms spread in exasperation, saying: "Ah, dammit! This took decades of science and engineering and now the tundra

## The Joke The comic parodies the premise of Jurassic Park. A scientist explains that they took blood from ancient mosquitoes caught in amber, then sequenced it, filled in gaps with reptile DNA, and

## The Joke The comic depicts a grandmother at Christmas giving her grandchildren a gift. She says she never needed to buy frivolous things for herself and has instead spent her money on presents: "I

## The Joke The comic presents two real facts: the "pood" is a unit of measurement equal to approximately 16 kilograms, and the "batman" is a unit of measurement equal to approximately 1 kilogram. It

## The Joke The comic begins with a character explaining a neurological observation: "Humans don't just have physiological responses to certain stimuli. We also have emotional responses to our physio

## The Joke The comic shows a woman asking a man: "Hey, want to hear a reverse anti-joke?" He asks, "What's that?" She explains: "It's a joke that appears to have no punchline, but then WHAM! The pun

## The Joke The comic shows a prehistoric barbarian-like figure named Gartok addressing a group. He declares that when he turned to violence, his enemies' wives and children had been taken. His blade

## The Joke An alien is asked how its study of human emotions is going. The alien declares it impossible, explaining that humans are the most contradictory beings in the universe. It describes a para

## The Joke A person enthusiastically explains that the prefix "mega-" acts as an augmentative in Modern Greek, meaning that words like "megalodon" translate to "big tooth." Following this logic, the

## The Joke A man arrives in the afterlife and meets the Devil, who asks why he did not follow the prosperity gospel -- the belief that God rewards faithful people with material wealth. The man asks

## The Joke A parent asks their child why they study so much. The child explains that if you master a sufficiently obscure academic topic, people will treat your half-formed opinions on unrelated sub