Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic opens with a cosmic scene: someone asks for "some animated blobs" to "precipitate out of the void," and a voice agrees. The blobs of matter form, and one asks what to do with "a

## The Joke A father is reassuring his son at bedtime. He explains that humans used to be scared of predators, other humans, tribal warfare, and so on, but that after years of civilization and modern

## The Joke The comic presents a "Life Pro Tip" at the top: "Whenever someone tries to make you do something, use the phrase 'I will not be crucified on this cross of [relevant object].'" The illustr

## The Joke A boss tells an employee, "I can get you on the management track if you give me $1,000 worth of 'career crystals.'" The employee sighs and replies, "Ugh. Okay, fine, you got me." The capt

## The Joke A couple announces to friends that they have decided to stay together after all. When their friends react with surprise and something resembling congratulations, the couple explains that

## The Joke Two characters are discussing scientific research. One mentions that studies have shown a correlation between something controversial -- apparently exposure to certain media -- and negati

## The Joke The comic presents a "Know Your Schools of Thought on Human Nature" guide with four philosophical perspectives. The "Optimism" school says people are basically good, and "I want to hear a

## The Joke Two people are stargazing and discussing moral philosophy. One poses the classic thought experiment: "Do you think there are fundamental moral truths?" The other replies that it's easy to

## The Joke A parent is shown speaking to their child at bedtime inside a cartoon house, delivering a version of "the talk" -- but instead of the real-world puberty talk, the parent is explaining car

## The Joke The comic is titled "Amusing Comics About Animals" and presents a series of panels where different animals are drawn in a cute, appealing style -- but instead of delivering wholesome anim

## The Joke The comic depicts what appears to be a scene from ancient Babylon or Mesopotamia. A large, intimidating figure (resembling a king or enforcer) demands "Put out your hand!" while a nervous

## The Joke A person prays to Jesus for help, but is told that Jesus is busy doing volunteer work for an NGO in Africa, so they'll be dealing with "regular God" instead. What follows is a series of i

## The Joke A group of people are at what appears to be a train station or transit stop. One person asks, "Has an express train ever actually sped you up versus just taking the next train?" Another r

## The Joke A couple is in bed together, and before they become intimate, the man asks the woman a series of increasingly odd questions. First he wants to know if she has "any information to add to t

## The Joke A father figure with glasses is reacting in horror to what appears to be a birthday party pinata. He shouts: "Oh my God! It looked perfectly normal, but there's no candy inside! 90% of it

## The Joke The comic is a long-form strip about a guy who discovers that using the same pathetic pickup line on every woman he meets -- delivered with absolute sincerity and persistence -- eventuall

## The Joke A dying man is on his deathbed surrounded by loved ones. He solemnly tells them: "Son, I haven't got long. I want you to remember my last words and tell them faithfully to those who ask."

## The Joke The comic depicts a man who has been cast as the protagonist of a movie. He explains that since becoming the lead character, his life has transformed: everything feels more dramatic, he's

## The Joke A child asks her mother what she's knitting, and the mother cheerfully replies that it's "a sweater for bottles" -- a cute, if slightly odd, craft project. The child laughs, seemingly fin

## The Joke The comic presents a back-of-the-envelope calculation in a textbook-style format. It estimates that cryptocurrency mining uses approximately 40 terawatt-hours of energy per year (E), that

## The Joke Two cavemen are having a conversation. One explains, "This is rock. Is called 'rock' because last week, Pag called it 'rock.'" The other caveman responds with exaggerated fascination: "Is

## The Joke The comic proposes a "Literary Turing Test" to determine whether a nonfiction book should have been a paragraph instead of a full book. The procedure works like this: take 100 people and

## The Joke The comic opens with a narrator saying, "Sometimes I want to get a tattoo of the word 'strength' just so I can make this joke over and over." In the panel, someone asks a man about his ta

## The Joke The comic begins with a person at a modern art museum confessing, "I gotta be honest, I don't get modern art." A museum guide (or fellow visitor) responds by saying it's all a "marketing

## The Joke In the first panel, a child runs to her mother crying, "Mom! Bobby's pulling my hair!" The mother calmly explains that Bobby is a baby -- he can't think like the older child, he doesn't u

## The Joke A woman walks in on a man (Steve) at his computer and gasps, "Oh my God, Steve! Are you doing a deepfake of your ex-wife? That is NOT cool!" But Steve clarifies that the image isn't sexua

## The Joke The comic shows a scene where someone is impressed when visiting a guy's place for the first time, commenting, "Wow, I'm always impressed when I see a guy's place for the first time and i

## The Joke A man is approached by government agents who inform him that, in terms of net earnings, he is exactly the median American. They tell him he is "exactly in the middle" -- he will never hav

## The Joke A man stands in what appears to be a Halloween setting (with small trick-or-treaters and a ghost visible in the background) and announces, "I'm a time traveler from the post-apocalyptic p

## The Joke Four professionals -- an engineer, a physicist, a computer scientist, and a mathematician -- are each asked to consider moving to a new place. Each reacts with a characteristically exagge

## The Joke The comic presents three panels contrasting different levels of human desire. The first panel, "What I Ought to Want," shows a figure peacefully contemplating, desiring "Wisdom." The seco

## The Joke A job candidate at an interview is told that the company has "normal hiring procedures" -- they ask puzzles and judge how well you solve them. When the candidate questions this, the inter

## The Joke A celebrity is recognized in public and says she is just trying to get some cheese, hoping for privacy. A fan approaches and says he would never violate her privacy, but then reveals he h

## The Joke A man gives an impassioned speech about how culture is amazing -- human beings have created an "ever-growing and immortal conversation" that began in East Africa, spread around the world,

## The Joke A man marvels at Google's auto-generated email responses, saying they "save me so much time" and that "it's like they can read my mind." He clicks on one of the suggested replies. The ema

## The Joke The comic is titled "How Interviews with Academics Go, Sorted by Career Stage" and shows four panels, each depicting an academic at a different career stage being asked the same question:

## The Joke A mathematician bursts through a door shouting "Great news, everyone! It turns out the problem we spent our careers working on can't be solved!" The other mathematicians in the room appea

## The Joke A doctor at an "advanced medical facility" welcomes a patient and boasts about their robotic diagnostic system. The robot can identify diseases 30 years earlier than traditional methods,

## The Joke The comic is a simple, striking visual: a landscape divided between a red sky and a white, snowy ground, with very little detail visible. The caption below reads: "Laugh all you want, for

## The Joke A doctor tells a patient named Mister Fong that they can take a flap from his thigh and graft it over his forehead, but that the "final course of action is up to you." The patient protest

## The Joke A couple is excitedly discussing the news that they are having twins. The father says they can have double birthdays, dress them in matching outfits, give them rhyming names, and so on. A

## The Joke A grandfather is reading to his grandchild and tells the story of Icarus, but in a distinctly unacademic way: "So, Icarus decided it was a great idea to make some wings out of feathers an

## The Joke The comic presents a pseudo-scientific theory about NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) as a fundamental trait of human evolution. A lecturer explains that "NIMBYism" -- humanity's general des

## The Joke A person is praying to God, referencing the biblical commandment to slay the Amalekites and asking whether this directive still applies: "Do we still need to do that? That'd be a lot. It'

## The Joke This comic is an extended riff on Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," in which Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a giant insect. In the comic, the stor

## The Joke In the first panel, parents worry about their kids, saying "Would you think our kids will be okay? When they grow up, we are going to see more extreme behavior. Don't see what their outle

## The Joke The comic is split into two panels, each showing a person at a podium addressing an audience. The top panel is labeled "FANTASY" and shows an enthusiastic tech evangelist declaring: "With

## The Joke A man is sitting at his computer and excitedly reads an ad aloud: "Bored 18-year-olds are just waiting to talk to me? Hell yes, I'm interested! Sign me up!" The humor relies on the reader

## The Joke A couple watches a film about artists and inventors who sacrifice everything for their craft, and the man is moved by it. He says he is "hampered by artists and directors who sacrifice ev

## The Joke A ghost appears to a living person and delivers an urgent warning: "I'm dead, but I'm still here!" The ghost explains that it has been held back from the afterlife because of unfinished b