Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A student is complaining about not wanting to do homework, and an older person (likely a parent or teacher) tells them "You don't wanna do homework? You wait until you get to real life."

## The Joke The comic is a twist on the classic fairy tale of the Frog Prince. A queen tells a king "Honey, it's all over." When the king asks "What?", she reminds him of the time she kissed a frog a

## The Joke The comic shows a large, monstrous face looming over a forest, bellowing "WHEERRRE... WHEEERRE..." in a menacing tone. Below, hiding among the bushes and trees, is Waldo (known as Wally i

## The Joke The comic begins with someone asking whether it concerns the listener how much social science is based on data from Scandinavian countries. The other person responds that Scandinavians ke

## The Joke A professor is lecturing about how the universe tends to take the easiest route from point A to point B -- a reference to the principle of least action in physics. He explains that, myste

## The Joke The comic is structured as a joke within a joke. The setup asks: "Question: What did the logician say to the man who was struck by lightning?" The image shows a man being violently struck

## The Joke A child excitedly announces "Mama! I'm drawing a submarine!" and proceeds to describe all its features: "Here's the kitchen and here's the dining room and here's where the toy cars are an

## The Joke This is a lengthy comic that explores the concept of speciation -- the process by which one species diverges into two or more distinct species. The comic follows a narrative where charact

## The Joke Aliens arrive in a spaceship and announce to Earth: "Prepare to be destroyed by the ultra-laser, Earthlings!" The humans look up and one says "I don't get it" while another observes "It's

## The Joke The comic presents a mini history lesson about the longitude problem. A narrator explains that about 50 years before the marine chronometer was invented, sailors had no reliable way to de

## The Joke A couple is having a conversation about the nature of scientific knowledge and public trust in science. One person explains how science works in terms of iterative progress -- that our un

## The Joke The comic is a graph titled "How I React to a New Delicious Food" with two variables plotted over time: "Quantity Eaten Daily" (in blue) and "Quantity Remaining in House" (in red). The gr

## The Joke The comic shows two older academics (possibly professors) having a debate about the nature of human behavior. One argues that behavioral genetics is "not a real science" because it tries

## The Joke The comic depicts an alien invasion scenario. An alien declares that their advanced weapons are "no match for human ingenuity" or something similar, but then a human character responds th

## The Joke A woman is looking at something on a screen (likely her phone) with a mixture of shock and reluctant admiration. She says, "I mean, I don't really want it, but... did you use a flying dro

## The Joke The comic shows a Federal Reserve official giving a press conference. He explains that for too long, the media and the public have looked to the Fed's carefully worded statements and trie

## The Joke The comic is titled "A Brief History of Life Online" and depicts five stages of a person's relationship with the internet. Stage 1: Excitement -- the person is thrilled that the internet

## The Joke A person dies and finds themselves floating as a ghost above their own body. They realize they must have "unfinished business" keeping them tethered to the earthly plane -- a classic ghos

## The Joke The comic shows a political rally or town hall scene. A supporter in the crowd declares, "I voted for him because he's brave. He says things other politicians wouldn't dare to say!" The p

## The Joke The comic shows a patient visiting a doctor. The doctor says something like, "Sure it took a while, but you're gonna be okay." The patient asks if it is time to make a list of things they

## The Joke A father is proudly telling his son that he's "really started exercising," to which the son responds skeptically. The father then launches into a statistical argument: women tend to live

## The Joke A job candidate is being interviewed and is asked why she wants to work for the company. She responds with an impressively thorough answer citing statistics, analysis of Atlantic and Paci

## The Joke The comic is titled "This is what learning logic gates feels like" and depicts a teacher explaining a digital logic circuit to a student. The teacher rattles off an intimidatingly dense c

## The Joke A robot is breaking up with a human woman, telling her "Sally, it will never work out between us." She asks why, and the robot explains that she is a biological entity with billions of ye

## The Joke The comic reimagines the fairy tale of Rapunzel through the lens of physics. A knight calls up to a tower, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!" In the next section, labeled "Free Bod

## The Joke Two cavemen are talking. One enthusiastically tells the other, "You not been in buffalo cave? Has great drawing of water buffalo made with red ochre pigment!" The other caveman angrily re

## The Joke The comic retells "The Ugly Duckling" fairy tale, but with a dark satirical twist. It begins faithfully: an ugly duckling is laughed at by the other ducklings. But then the story veers of

## The Joke A scientist is pitching an ambitious proposal to a colleague. The idea: Jupiter's atmosphere contains vast amounts of hydrogen and helium, which could theoretically serve as fusion fuel.

## The Joke A bearded man tells his partner, "Honey... I just ordered some olive oil on Amazon, and the recommendations are just... really weird." The screen displays the recommendation: "You might e

## The Joke A scientist is excitedly telling an animal -- which appears to be a platypus or echidna -- about its classification: "And scientists call your kind 'monotremes.' You are a very rare sort

## The Joke The comic shows a single panel depicting a trolley (streetcar) hurtling down a track with a crowd of passengers visible through the windows. The sign on the side of the trolley reads "Phi

## The Joke The comic depicts a conversation about the phrase "good old days," where one character nostalgically invokes the past. Another character pushes back, pointing out that when you say "good

## The Joke A parent confronts their child at the door, asking "Where's your homework?" The child gives the classic excuse: "The dog ate it!" However, the parent reveals the devastating catch — the h

## The Joke The comic presents three panels showing the evolution of automated text-checking software across time. In the first panel, labeled something like "Back to topic," a spell checker asks "Di

## The Joke A character earnestly declares that they feel their calling in life is looking at books to see if they are readable or perhaps worthy of attention. Another character immediately deflects

## The Joke The comic depicts a first-contact scenario between humans and Martians. In the first panel, an astronaut welcomes the Martians and explains that during their 15-month journey, humanity ha

## The Joke The comic reimagines the world of Scooby-Doo through the lens of gentrification. The gang unmasks the "real villain," who turns out to be an old man — but the twist is that he was trying

## The Joke A man finds himself shipwrecked on a tropical desert island. At first he is alarmed — "My God, I'm shipwrecked here!" — but then he takes stock of his situation: there are plenty of fruit

## The Joke The comic shows a man in a suit holding a stick, standing next to a battered computer. He declares: "The halting problem is easy to solve. If the program runs too long, I take this stick

## The Joke The comic walks through the simulation argument step by step. In the first panel, a character explains: "There are possibly more simulations than realities. Therefore, there is probably a

## The Joke A grandmother figure is telling a young man named Steven that "there was no magic" and that it was not some special ring or talisman that made him successful. She explains that it was "th

## The Joke A man knocks on the bathroom door and asks, "Why do you lock the bathroom door? We've been together for years and have I ever barged in there?" From behind the door, the woman (clearly an

## The Joke The comic is a two-panel strip. In the top panel, a Terminator-like figure (naked, muscular, menacing) bursts into what appears to be a clothing store or office and demands: "Give me your

## The Joke The comic reimagines the Garden of Eden story. Adam says to Eve, "And you, Eve, you and all women ever after will experience pain in childbirth, eat from the cursed ground, get old..." Ev

## The Joke Two medieval-looking warriors are standing on a hillside. One says, "I appreciate that swords are more effective than clubs, but where's that sense of serenity you get from bludgeoning a

## The Joke A parent tells a child, "Okay, that's enough screen time. Let's go outside a while." She shows the child photos from the 1950s to illustrate that "even when you were a kid, you weren't al

## The Joke A television announcer excitedly declares that "thanks to cultured meat technology, we can take cells from the political figures you dislike most, grow their bodies, including bones and i

## The Joke This is a long-form philosophical comic that builds through several observations about the improbability and strangeness of existence. It begins by noting that technology does not just ap

## The Joke A man at a bar approaches a woman with what appears to be a pickup line: "Hey baby, are you Death?" She responds with a confused "What?" and he delivers the second half: "Because I hope y

## The Joke A woman tells her partner, "Baby, I never want to be without you. I couldn't go on." When asked "Really?" she enthusiastically confirms, "Yes! Yes! I would die without you!" The partner t