Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic is titled "The Importance of Interrogative Pronouns" and shows how a tiny change in wording transforms a childish comeback into a profound philosophical crisis. In the first pan

## The Joke A mortgage broker sits behind a desk with a cauldron (like a witch's cauldron) and tells a couple: "Reach into the cauldron and pull out today's interest rate!" The caption below reads: "

## The Joke A robot (resembling HAL 9000 or a similar AI) is speaking to a woman. The robot says: "Sally, we can no longer date. I will never understand your 'love.'" It then offers: "But I can teach

## The Joke A child goes trick-or-treating at an elderly woman's door. Instead of saying "Trick or treat!" the child launches into an existential monologue: "I'm an eight year old boy. When I read hi

## The Joke A person explains the Ultimatum Game to another: Subject A receives $100 and must offer some split to Subject B. Subject B can accept or reject the offer. If Subject B rejects, nobody get

## The Joke The comic presents the concept of "Nuanced Motivational Posters" -- a series of motivational poster parodies where each inspiring statement is immediately followed by a deflating caveat:

## The Joke This is a long-form comic depicting a political debate or discussion about scientific integrity. The comic appears to show a panel discussion or debate format where speakers discuss how s

## The Joke A child asks his mother, "Mom, do dogs have an afterlife?" The mother gently replies, "I'm sorry sweetie, they don't." The child then reasons: "Dogs don't have souls, so there isn't anyth

## The Joke A man is at a temple (or bank) complaining to a money changer (depicted as Jesus) about a Catch-22 situation with fees: a fee was charged that put his balance below zero, which triggered

## The Joke A reporter confronts Superman about his X-ray vision, pointing out a fundamental problem with how it is usually depicted. The common perception is that X-ray vision works like a one-way s

## The Joke A couple is stargazing when they spot a shooting star. The woman tells the man to make a wish, and he wishes he "was never sad." His companion asks if he is sure that was a good wish. He

## The Joke The comic traces the evolution of instant messaging technology through an absurd trajectory. It starts with the factual observation that instant messaging was originally designed for long

## The Joke The comic presents a "prank idea" where someone gives another person chewing gum that smells like their ex-wife's perfume. The man chewing the gum becomes emotional, whispering "Lily..."

## The Joke A couple is having what appears to be a tense conversation structured around joke formats. The woman starts with "Knock knock," but the punchline is "A woman who has finally come to terms

## The Joke A woman dies and arrives at "Sysadmin Heaven," where a robed figure tells her they will not even review her life for sin if she can just help get a computer to talk to the network. She di

## The Joke The comic presents a "browser plugin idea" that automatically replaces mentions of military hardware with their equivalent value expressed in scholarships. The example shown on a news web

## The Joke A man presents what appears to be a mathematical proof by induction. He starts with the premise: "If you have a group of people at your house, it's a party." Then he adds: "If you remove

## The Joke The comic proposes "a site where you can leave reviews of anything" and then shows absurd reviews of things that are not normally reviewed as products. Reviews include: the color orange (

## The Joke A grandfather is speaking to what appears to be a young boy, saying: "Imagine you're a general. Your army is the only chance to keep your race alive. You know that if you send them out, a

## The Joke A couple is in a graveyard at night. The woman says "This sure is spooky, Johnnie!" and the man responds "Hold tight, Sally." She mentions hearing that "sometimes the dead rise," and the

## The Joke The comic opens with a woman presenting the simulation argument: "If simulated realities are possible, there should be more simulated realities than real ones. This is probably all fake."

## The Joke A scientist explains the "Pinocchio Illusion" to a woman: "Put your finger on your nose. Now we vibrate your bicep. This tells your brain that your fingertip is moving forward. Your brain

## The Joke The comic presents an "Aging Tip" that reads: "Pickup lines will be useful in the nursing home. Start preparing now." Below, an elderly man in a nursing home delivers the line: "Baby, you

## The Joke Two people decide to come up with a new fetish by spinning a "Wheel of Perversion." They spin it, but one of them realizes, "Oh shoot, one of these was a wheel of social reform movements.

## The Joke A woman thanks her friend for coming over, saying she does not know what to do -- then lists a series of increasingly bizarre and controlling commands: "The TV will turn off. Ever. Again.

## The Joke The comic reveals what peer review actually looks like behind the scenes: overworked academics doing it for free, spending five minutes skimming a paper they barely understand, writing va

## The Joke An older man performs the classic "magic trick" for his grandson, pretending to find a dollar behind the boy's ear: "What's this behind your ear? A dollar! Oh boy, lucky day!" The grandso

## The Joke A father is reading a book to his young daughter. He says, "After nineteen additional trials, of course, the results were shown to be anomalous." The caption below reads: "'The Tortoise a

## The Joke A rugged-looking man boasts to a woman, "Baby, I am a sexual Tyrannosaurus." In the next panel, labeled "Later...", the couple is in bed, and the woman asks, "Why don't you use your hands

## The Joke An old woman calls for help, saying a man stole her purse. A person in a pink costume (resembling a superhero) arrives and says "Have no fear! Opposite Man is here!" The woman asks, "Oh G

## The Joke A scientist says their experiment found an effect, but they are not sure it is real. Another person asks if they ran an ANOVA (a statistical test). The scientist replies that the easiest

## The Joke A man tells a woman he is thinking about switching from engineering to getting an MBA. The woman responds with disgust, saying "Ugh. Welp, I guess I'll just rip this up. Really thought th

## The Joke A group of explorers are searching for a unicorn. One says, "There's no way we'll find the horn of the unicorn. They don't make sense. Every other similar species has two horns or none."

## The Joke A larger kid demands from a smaller kid: "Gimme yer lunch money, Ernie. Please." In the next panel, the bully escalates: "Gimme yer lunch money, or I'll use my knowledge of statistics, an

## The Joke Two people are walking and one says, "I just don't get how people fall for these crazy cult leaders." Then a man approaches them with a pitch: "Excuse me, would you be interested in livin

## The Joke A man tells a woman, "You know, honey, it takes more muscles to frown than to smile!" She responds: "You're not counting the fact that I reflexively clench my anus whenever I fake a smile

## The Joke An alien (or person in a sci-fi scenario) explains what pleiotropy is to someone. Pleiotropy means that "one gene controls for more than one trait." The alien describes how humans have ha

## The Joke A news anchor tells a scientist, "Hey scientist! We need a new drug for this year. What's in this jar?" The scientist says, "That's just pure estrogen. Never heard of it. What's it do?" T

## The Joke An older man delivers increasingly dire "bad news" to a group of young people. He says he has decided to ignore economic data and assume the challenges facing their generation are the sam

## The Joke Someone has eaten a man's pie, and he doesn't know who did it. He announces he will use "the medieval practice of trial by ordeal." He declares he will tell an endless series of dad jokes

## The Joke A man advises his friend: "You shouldn't marry for beauty. You should marry for brains." When asked why, he explains that beauty fades quickly -- if you marry at 35, you only get maybe 25

## The Joke The comic is titled "Life Tip: Knowing Physics Symbols Makes You Sexy." A man introduces himself as "Bob Q. Finkelblatt." A woman asks, "What's the Q short for?" In the final panel, Bob s

## The Joke A woman welcomes everyone to "Technicality Club," announcing that the first rule is: "You do not talk about Technicality Club." Someone immediately asks, "Does typing count as talking?" O

## The Joke The comic is titled "The best way to ruin a protest is to join it badly." In the top panel, protesters hold signs reading "It's Adam and Eve, NOT Adam and Steve!" — a common anti-gay-marr

## The Joke A child builds a robot and orders it: "Robot, I order you to be my best friend forever!" The robot responds "Yes, master." Later, the child tells the robot to go play with his pals, and t

## The Joke A woman asks a man: "Hey, wanna come increase your fitness with me?" The man declines, saying "Oh, no thanks. I hit the gym this morning." The caption at the bottom reads: "And so, the bi

## The Joke A woman goes to see a lawyer after a custody dispute. The lawyer asks how she found him, and she explains she saw his advertisement. The lawyer notes some concerns about her character and

## The Joke A woman sees a man in a large robotic exoskeleton suit labeled "Dr. Sexoskeleton" and asks "What the hell is that?" The man explains that with the suit, he can do push-ups four times as f

## The Joke A man tells his wife that he is not sure dinner is going to turn out great, and asks her to go out to the guests and "tamp down expectations." In the next panel, she is standing before th

## The Joke A man bursts into a tattoo shop explaining that he has no ability to form new memories. He needs the tattoo artist to tattoo information on his body so he can remember things. The tattoo