Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A man kneels and prays: "Dear Lord, why are we here?" He then asks: "Why did life begin on this plate? Why do we become?" A response comes (presumably from God or a scientist): "Our genet

## The Joke A robot sits at a computer that displays a CAPTCHA-style prompt, but instead of the familiar "Prove you are not a robot," it reads "Prove you are not a human." The robot types: "There are

## The Joke In the first panel, a woman asks a man: "You ever wonder why we don't remember dreams?" He replies: "It's weird. You wake up with something vivid and it fades in a minute or two. Poof. Go

## The Joke A man in a lab coat is giving a tour to another man, saying "Oh my God! This place is so clean! So sterile! That's why you have to pay people to work here. We didn't do that in the old da

## The Joke A woman is telling another couple about a frightening experience with her son: "When I looked down, your son was unconscious and his breathing was barely detectable and his temperature wa

## The Joke The comic retells the classic Batman origin story. In Gotham City, a mugger shoots a couple in front of their young son, who cries "Mom! Dad!" and vows "I will avenge this! I will be a fo

## The Joke A doctor (or medical professional) stands in her white coat, speaking in a philosophical tone: "Every event in the history of the universe has made some small contribution to this moment,

## The Joke A man is talking to a woman, saying he is afraid he cannot get any of the genes through "that much legs accelerate." The woman asks "Accelerate?" and the man responds with further confuse

## The Joke A group of early hominids are observing a large, imposing figure (likely a Gigantopithecus or similar large primate). One hominid, Charlotte, asks if "that guy" is bigger than everyone el

## The Joke This is a long-form comic exploring the concept of intelligence. It begins with people discussing what intelligence means, with various characters offering different perspectives. The com

## The Joke The comic is titled "The Event" and depicts a post-apocalyptic scenario in the style of serious literary or cinematic post-apocalypse narratives. A bearded survivor narrates his experienc

## The Joke The comic reimagines a scene from Dr. Seuss's beloved children's book "Green Eggs and Ham." A character drawn in Seuss's distinctive style says "I do like green eggs and ham, but... tight

## The Joke The comic depicts a Jewish Passover Seder. In the opening panel, a man at the head of the table explains the traditional meaning of the bitter herbs (maror): "We eat these bitter herbs to

## The Joke A lawyer is reading a will aloud at a formal table surrounded by family members of the deceased. The will states: "To my darling daughter, I wish to leave the British Library's entire anc

## The Joke Sailors on a ship at night spot a ghost ship in the Atlantic. One describes it in classic maritime horror fashion: "It's a ghost ship! They say she'll appear off the coast of Halifax, Liv

## The Joke A man notices that his colleague is wearing an upside-down top hat and asks about it. The colleague explains that he is a "reverse Victorian." In the Victorian era, people maintained rigi

## The Joke The comic presents a debate about voting. The first panel makes the common argument that voting is a mistake because a single vote is unlikely to change the outcome of an election, so it

## The Joke Two people are complaining about how "older generations and kids today are constantly competing with each other" over who had it harder or who is more worthy, debating about participation

## The Joke A woman visits a fortune teller, but instead of receiving mystical predictions about her future, the fortune teller delivers brutally honest sociological observations. He tells her that h

## The Joke This comic is a meta-commentary in which the cartoonist (Zach Weinersmith, represented by the bearded character) introduces a new political comic series called "SMBC Goes to Washington" w

## The Joke A group of humans has been abducted by aliens and are being kept as cattle. One human protests, but another points out that by human standards, they have no real cause for complaint: ther

## The Joke Two people are discussing the Gaia hypothesis -- the idea that the Earth is a giant, self-regulating organism. One person is skeptical, but the other pushes the analogy further: if the Ea

This comic explores the question of whether humans should strive for pure happiness or for fulfillment, reframing it as a math problem rather than a philosophical one. The first character points out t

## The Joke The comic is split into two parallel sequences. In the top half, a man sits on the edge of his bed with his dog, staring ahead in existential despair: "Is this all there is? Go to work, c

This comic depicts a magician performing a classic card trick, but in a fascist political context. The magician presents a card to an audience member and says "This is your card. If you disagree, the

This comic plays on the classic sitcom trope of a wife catching her husband watching something embarrassing on TV late at night. The wife confronts her husband, saying she wants him to know that what

This comic takes place in a massage parlor, where a client is receiving a massage. Someone asks if they can interest the client in a "happy ending." The client awkwardly agrees, and the masseuse launc

This comic shows medieval dungeon torturers at work, with one torturer turning to the other and asking: "Do you ever worry that, hundreds of years from now, everything we do here will be used as a sex

This comic features a couple where the woman announces she's pregnant and the baby isn't her partner's. She says it's "genetically not yours" -- but the man immediately responds with "finders keepers!

This comic is a twist on the classic "walks into a bar" joke format. A priest, a rabbi, and a clown walk into a bar, and the bartender says "Is this a joke?" In the next panel, it's revealed that they

This comic shows a police officer interrogating a suspect by simultaneously playing both good cop and bad cop. The officer's speech is a single run-on monologue that careens between threatening ("I wa

## The Joke The comic presents a pseudo-mathematical "literary analysis" of Moby-Dick. It starts with real facts: an adult sperm whale weighs about 100,000 pounds and an adult human weighs about 140

## The Joke The comic is structured as a classic "X walks into a bar" joke, but with three types of intelligence: a biological intelligence, a machine intelligence, and a social intelligence walk int

This comic presents a dystopian scenario about autonomous self-driving cars. The robots/AI explain that autonomous cars could simply take the shortest route between points, but the only thing being "c

This comic satirizes modern political news media. A news anchor announces: "Today, a thing happened. We'll be discussing the reaction to the reaction to an opinion about an opinion about a poll about

## The Joke In this comic, two celestial beings (appearing as God-like figures, one resembling a large orange alien or deity) are observing Earth from the clouds. The first one says they have let evo

## The Joke A person arrives in Heaven and excitedly declares, "I made it! I made it to Heaven!" He then asks God about all the amazing things he can now do. God responds with genuine enthusiasm: "Yo

## The Joke Two people are watching a TV show -- most likely a classic sitcom. One of them enthusiastically describes the show: "Oh, come here! I just love this show. Every time someone tells a joke,

This comic explores how people selectively invoke group consensus to support their arguments. A man tells his wife that experts agree collecting samurai swords is "odd" and it's common knowledge. The

This comic features two identical twin men approaching a woman at what appears to be a cocktail party, suggestively asking if she'd be interested in a "menage a trois... with twins." The woman decline

This comic shows a mother asking her child what they should do "when we get home." The child objects: "We? We're not all going to the same place at the same time. We don't all have the same schedule.

## The Joke The comic presents three facts formatted like a math problem on a chalkboard: the average cost of private university tuition is about $17,000 per semester, the median salary of an adjunct

## The Joke A woman states her belief that "human beings are all essentially kind and peaceful." A man responds with what seems like a reasonable follow-up question: if she truly believes everyone is

This comic targets prosperity gospel preachers, likely referencing Joel Osteen (given the title "Osteensibly," a pun on "ostensibly" and "Osteen"). A congregant asks the pastor how he can believe in a

## The Joke The comic is a wordless, visual narrative told across many panels. A child is given a balloon by a large hand (presumably a parent). Over the course of the comic, we watch the child grow

## The Joke A genie offers a wish. The person wishes for world peace. The genie explains all the ways this could go wrong depending on interpretation: does "peace" mean the absence of violence (could

## The Joke A couple is shown in a romantic embrace, with one partner declaring "I swear, Tom, I will love you until the end of time." This is a classic romantic vow, implying eternal devotion. The s

This comic depicts a space mission scenario where Commander Allen is on a mission to Venus. Mission control asks if there are any issues to report, and Commander Allen responds there are no issues "am

This comic features a flirtatious pickup scenario where someone asks "Hey baby, you wanna calculate the area under those curves?" -- using mathematical integration as a double entendre about the other

This comic tackles the ethics of organ donation and scale. A presenter poses a thought experiment: suppose there are a group of people who each need an organ to survive. Can you kill a healthy person