Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke One person says to another: "Baby, your love is like heroin to me." The other person starts to respond warmly with "Aww, that's--" but is cut off by the first person completing the though

## The Joke A man steps on a hairball left by his cat and exclaims "ARGH! Stepped on a hairball." He then pauses, gets a sly grin, and strikes a confident pose saying "Oh yes, ladies." The final pane

## The Joke Two people are having a conversation. One person is complaining that they don't get paid enough for their creative work. The other person tries to give practical advice: "Don't quit your

## The Joke The comic tells the story of Jack and the Beanstalk reimagined as a geopolitical crisis. Jack plants magic beans, which grow into a giant beanstalk reaching a giant's castle. A scientist

## The Joke The comic's title panel reads: "NOAH'S URETHRAL SWAB RESULTS WERE PREDICTABLE." A doctor tells Noah (the biblical figure known for building the Ark and gathering two of every animal): "I'

## The Joke The comic depicts a man trying to explain romance to a woman in purely evolutionary and game-theory terms. He describes love as a strategy: you run yourself through a series of increasing

## The Joke A woman is giving a presentation about declining attendance, showing a graph and explaining that "our rate of observing is through the roof and it'''s rising. We need to change or people

## The Joke This is a long-form comic exploring the Fermi Paradox -- the question of why, given the vastness and age of the universe, we have not detected any signs of intelligent extraterrestrial li

## The Joke A character says, "All I'''m saying is, technically, you don'''t know this is false." The image shows a vast field densely packed with kittens, with a narrow triangular wedge labeled "You

## The Joke The comic reimagines the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a modern business negotiation. In the first panel, God (depicted with a golden disc/halo) tells Abraham that if he can fin

## The Joke A woman dressed in Puritan-era clothing (complete with a dark dress, white collar, and wide-brimmed hat) says, "Wait. I got it. Just put this next to it." She is holding up a red piece of

## The Joke A child asks a woman (presumably her mother or grandmother), "Could you sing me Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?" The woman responds with an astrophysically accurate version of the nursery rh

## The Joke A man is reading a checklist that describes classic signs of addiction: disinclination to change coupled with decreasing happiness, less time spent with family, less sleep or sleep of low

## The Joke The comic follows a sequence about education and gaming. In the first panel, someone declares they are going to "gaming all day, gonna use all my money" while another person says "Not! Ed

## The Joke A woman tells her partner, "Honey, I want to express my emotional condition to you through the use of the sock puppet." The partner looks at the sock puppet and notes, "It hasn'''t said a

## The Joke A man is confronting his ex-partner about their breakup. He says, "I can accept that you broke up with me, but I just want closure. I want a reason!" The woman responds vaguely, "I think

## The Joke A woman wakes up and asks her friend how drunk she was last night. She is told she got breast implants -- and specifically, she had a chip installed so that whenever the implants are sque

## The Joke Two characters debate whether free will exists. One argues that all human behavior is determined by prior causes (physics, neuroscience, genetics) and therefore free will is an illusion.

## The Joke A news broadcast announces that "the frog-herpes" is now officially a pandemic. It is lethal in 10% of cases and spreading quickly. How it made the leap from amphibians to humans is still

## The Joke A man gives a monologue about how modern technology has made it possible to compress enormous amounts of information into tiny spaces, manufacture memory at molecular scales, and produce

## The Joke A woman shows a man an ancient coded text, saying it was created a thousand years ago and appears to be covered in patterns, but no one has been able to crack the code. Since the man is a

## The Joke A man prays to God asking how he will die. God tells him it will be "unexpected." The man is grateful and relieved. Later, the man suffers a heart attack and, while dying, protests that h

## The Joke A couple finishes a dinner date and a waiter presents them with a choice: they can either pay for dinner normally, or have dinner for free but listen to a commercial for products the wait

## The Joke A woman tells her friend that she sometimes feels like she lives in the wrong era and would be so much happier in the Renaissance. Her friend says "Then let us go!" and they are magically

## The Joke A woman asks a man "How are you?" and he replies "Great." She then asks "And how are you?" and he says "Just okay." She informs him that his lack of consistent self-assessment means he ha

## The Joke A man makes a prank call, but the person on the other end responds with genuinely heartbreaking problems -- they cannot afford to keep their refrigerator running because of their baby's m

## The Joke The comic depicts sperm cells inside a condom having a philosophical conversation about what lies "beyond the latex." One sperm asks what might be beyond the boundary of their universe (t

## The Joke The Green Goblin presents Spider-Man with a classic supervillain dilemma: "Choose, Spiderman! You can either save your girlfriend from plummeting to her death... or save your credit ratin

## The Joke The comic is titled "We should never have let our kids read Atlas Shrugged." A mother tells her daughter Sally to clean her room. Sally defiantly responds: "Who is John Galt?" ## The Hum

## The Joke The comic begins with the Fermi Paradox: "If there are aliens out there, how come we haven't heard from them?" Scientists set up a listening apparatus (a satellite dish) and one day recei

## The Joke The comic is titled "Coaching Tip: Toward the end of a group exercise routine, you can yell pretty much anything for inspiration." A fitness instructor is leading a group exercise class a

## The Joke Two people are lying under the stars having a philosophical conversation. One argues that God wants there to be no suffering for human beings, but the only time God became a human (i.e.,

## The Joke The comic is titled "Economics Fun Fact: Paul Samuelson Got Around" and depicts a man resembling the famous economist Paul Samuelson (wearing glasses and a bow tie) at what appears to be

## The Joke This long-form comic tells a story about the evolution of military technology and empathy. It begins with the premise that it is easier to kill at a distance than up close, so drones were

## The Joke The comic presents a 3x3 grid titled "Existence: A Guide" that maps out philosophical worldviews. The columns go from happy (smiley face) to sad (frowny face), and the rows go from "It's

## The Joke A child is writing a prayer letter that reads "Deer Jesus, please help my mommy with being a mommy." The child has misspelled "Dear" as "Deer." In the next panel, rather than the prayer b

## The Joke A passenger on a plane notices they are stuck next to a proselytizer -- someone who wants to share "the good word about our Lord and Savior." The enthusiastic missionary says they will be

## The Joke A genie offers a person three wishes with the standard rule that they cannot wish for more wishes. The person makes two clever setup wishes: first, that each wish be considered separately

## The Joke The comic opens with the premise: "The more complicated the math, the dumber you sound explaining it." A person then attempts to explain Stokes' theorem in layman's terms: "Yeah, that's h

## The Joke An alien reports back to his superiors about his visit to Earth. He describes humanity in the most unflattering terms possible: their oceans are polluted, their skies are smoggy, they hav

## The Joke A child asks her mother where puppies go when they die. The mother gives the classic comforting answer: to a magical, wonderful place with a great big park, all the snacks they could want

## The Joke Rene Descartes declares his famous philosophical statement "I think, therefore I am." In the next panels, he shrinks down to a tiny figure sitting on a large couch, then the TV turns on t

## The Joke A nurse or birthing instructor at a birthing center explains that taking narcotics to ease labor pain will make you feel sort of drunk. She advises: when deciding what you want, consider

## The Joke This is a long-form comic that appears to depict a sprawling mythological or fantasy narrative involving various historical and legendary figures making discoveries and confrontations. Th

## The Joke The comic is titled "Every time I do vector calculus." A person imagines that in the future, kids will have manipulable holograms that will make abstract mathematical concepts much easier

## The Joke A man on a date is confessing that he has done terrible things in his past. He then tries to absolve himself by arguing that since the human body replaces its molecules over time, and tho

## The Joke Two children are having a typical schoolyard insult contest. One child escalates by saying "You stink times infinity!" The other child is stunned, realizing there might be nothing larger

## The Joke A woman explains that "kids, moms, and dads really love each other" but describes it as being "in a way largely centered around a triangular cycle between loneliness, sex, and guilt, in w

## The Joke A figure in a black robe carrying a scythe appears before a man, who shouts "DEATH?!" The robed figure clarifies that he gets that a lot, but he is actually just a guy in a black robe car

## The Joke This is a long-form, mostly serious comic in a poetic, philosophical style. A figure lies dying after an apparent fall and reflects on life, consciousness, and existence. The narration mo