Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A woman invents time travel and immediately goes back in time to kill Hitler. This creates an unintended consequence: with so many time travelers trying to kill Hitler, the Nazis become i

## The Joke A person is being electrocuted (or otherwise tortured) and demands to know why. They want revenge on their torturer, but the torturer explains that the supply chain of responsibility is i

## The Joke An older man lectures a younger person, saying "You know why your generation sucks? Every time you did anything, you got a damn trophy for it!" The younger person responds: "Dad, you're p

## The Joke A passenger tells the driver, "Bobby! Don't text so fast while driving!" Another person in the car says, "C'mon honey, what's the worst that could happen?" The final panel zooms out to sh

## The Joke Two people discuss the ethics of teleportation. One argues that it is unethical to put someone in a teleporter because it destroys the original and creates a copy, meaning "you're killing

## The Joke A character presents "the economic argument" for some position, which turns out to be simply: "I will pay you to agree with me." The joke is that this is, technically, a valid economic ar

## The Joke A scientist tells a robot: "You are the most advanced robot yet. Out of my fear for the future, I order you to destroy all unfriendly human-created intelligences you meet." The caption be

## The Joke A woman asks her partner, "What's the matter, honey?" He responds, "Nothing." She says, "It's clearly not nothing." He then launches into a physics lecture: "Even empty space has vacuum e

## The Joke The comic reimagines the myth of Sisyphus. A figure (presumably a god or overseer) tells Sisyphus that he is cursed to push a stone up a hill only to see it roll back down over and over a

## The Joke The comic depicts a courtroom scene. A defense attorney argues that his client stole a baby's rattle, but since the baby (the plaintiff) has no object permanence -- meaning babies lack th

## The Joke A woman is lying in bed at 2:00 AM, unable to sleep because she has started thinking about her life. She mutters "No! No!" as a small purple creature appears and introduces itself as "Rem

## The Joke The comic shows three levels of police interrogation technique. In the first panel, labeled "Basic: Good Cop / Bad Cop," a friendly officer tells the suspect to talk and offers to get bet

## The Joke A woman with glasses (a chemist) is speaking to two messy, disheveled children. She says: "I believe we can decrease the disorder of your bodies by introducing energy into them." The capt

## The Joke A virus-like creature inside a human body announces "Time to puke, infected human!" The human protests: "No! Wait. I'll make you a deal." The human explains that the virus wants him to vo

## The Joke A woman (apparently a daughter) asks her mother: "At what point did you throw up the most when you were pregnant with me?" The mother, wearing glasses, replies: "In the weeks leading up t

## The Joke A reporter confronts a reverend about his theory that gay sex causes bad weather. The reverend confirms: "Yeah!" A scientist presents a chart showing a clear correlation between gay sex a

## The Joke A couple is in bed. The man attempts dirty talk: "Yeah, you like that sex that I'm doing? You like how I'm doing sex?" The woman responds with tepid enthusiasm. He then tries to escalate:

## The Joke A woman tells her partner: "We have to break up." He asks why, and she explains that her quantum computer has scanned all possible universes where they stay together, and only five percen

## The Joke A person tells their friend that they have news that may "startle" them. They reveal that they are a male robot. The friend protests, "You can't be! You have long hair!" The robot explain

## The Joke An interviewer asks someone from the past what it was like to live in "such a repressed era" regarding privacy. The historical figure responds that at the time, they didn't see it that wa

## The Joke A man tells a woman named Sally, "You know, Sally, it takes more muscles to frown than to smile." She asks if he's saying she should smile more. He clarifies: "I'm saying if you were more

## The Joke The comic is titled "Revolution: A Guide" and follows the progression of a revolution in five stages. The first four stages reference the famous quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:

## The Joke The comic is split into two panels labeled "Non-Parent" and "Parent." In the first panel, a non-parent who apparently built a museum says idealistically, "You know, it wasn't easy buildin

## The Joke A mysterious figure (depicted with glowing eyes in the dark) offers a woman a choice: take the yellow pill to know all things, or take the green pill to know nothing but happiness. The wo

## The Joke Two friends decide to throw a "time traveler party" — a party specifically designed to attract visitors from the future. They quickly realize the problem: a time traveler would only go to

## The Joke A person finds a laptop left on a park bench. A devil appears and tempts them: "Take it! If he's so careless, he doesn't deserve it!" An angel then appears and suggests returning it to th

## The Joke One person mentions "Occam's Tweezers" while discussing a project. The other person corrects them: "What? You mean Occam's Razor?" The first person replies, "Nope." The caption at the bot

## The Joke A female proctologist laments that "people don't respect proctologists." She describes the indignities of the job: patients only come when "something doesn't feel right down there" or whe

## The Joke A group of toes (depicted as large, anthropomorphized fingers/toes) hold a revolutionary rally. Their leader declares: "Brothers! Sisters! For too long have we slaved under the yoke of th

## The Joke A girl scout (or similar youth organization member) knocks on a door and announces: "Come back! We'''ll give you a credit card! You'''d like to purchase a variable rate -- er, an adjustab

## The Joke A news anchor reports on a complex issue (economics, climate, foreign policy) and gets virtually every detail wrong — not through malice but through the impossible task of condensing mont

## The Joke Two friends are sitting on a couch playing video games. One says, "You know, I'''ve played this game for ten years, and I think I'''ve finally gotten tired of it." The caption below reads

## The Joke God appears to a man and presents him with a test of character: "You will receive a threesome in one hour, but only if in that time you complete in this room the works of Tolstoy." The ma

## The Joke A politician at a podium announces that since girls commit crimes at a much lower rate than boys, and most people from their teenage years do not grow up to commit "any sort of incident,"

## The Joke A single-panel comic shows a man quoting a famous line from Goethe'''s Faust: "And here, poor fool! with all my lore; I stand no wiser than before!" But he adds a modern twist: "But I did

## The Joke In a segment titled "Weiner Family Stories" (a recurring meta-reference to the cartoonist Zach Weiner'''s own family), a couple explains that they named their daughter Ada. A friend asks

## The Joke A bearded man proudly declares his lineage: "My great granpappy warn'''t no monkey. My pappy was, though. My granpa was a fish with legs, and his pappy was a self-replicatin''' strand of

## The Joke A child in the back seat of a car asks their father, "Dad, where do ponies go when they die?" The father, who is driving past a cemetery (with a gravestone visible reading "RIP Curly"), r

## The Joke An alien civilization has detected an object on a collision course with their planet. It is a thousand billion billion times larger than them, making any defense or evacuation impossible.

## The Joke The comic explores the idea that "from a distance, things look perfect." It starts by noting that George Washington looks great from afar but up close reveals flaws ("Please help"). The s

## The Joke A person says that whenever they are happy, they want more of everything. They wish there were a unit of measurement that describes a large amount numerically but a small amount when you

## The Joke A young child has written "2+2 = 4" on a small chalkboard. A parent (who is clearly a mathematician) responds: "Well, obviously. But, can you prove the solution is unique?" The caption be

## The Joke The comic is titled "At Least Once a Month." A person opens what appears to be a bank statement and sees something alarming -- the statement reveals "everything is FUCKED." They panic: "O

## The Joke A woman excitedly announces that she solved a variational problem that took 3 days and 40 pages of calculation. Another person points out she could have just used a computer algebra syste

## The Joke The comic retells the ancient philosophical anecdote about Socrates (or a similar philosopher) and the unexamined life. A person describes how they were once "unfettered, unfettered, and

## The Joke Two aliens are presenting their findings about humans. They announce that their zoologists have discovered that humans are attracted to silk undergarments. To "accelerate copulation," the

## The Joke A parent gives their child Billy a "Where's Waldo" book. Before the child can even try to find Waldo himself, the parent uses image recognition software on a tablet to instantly solve the

## The Joke The comic is titled "Every National Security Overreach Hearing." A government official at a hearing states: "I just want to be perfectly clear to the citizens of this country: we only vio

## The Joke The comic is titled "Job Interview Tip: Give Original Answers to Typical Questions." An interviewer asks the standard question, "So, why do you want to work at this company?" The intervie

## The Joke A young man asks his father, "Dad, how do I know if a girl really likes me or just wants me for my body?" The father suggests a test: perform a controlled experiment to eliminate one poss