Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic features a conversation between a human man and a large blue genie-like figure who appears to be God or a divine creator. The man is complaining about the design of the human bo

## The Joke The first panel shows a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain it to your grandmother, you don't understand it." A student watches as his grandmother writes comp

## The Joke This comic is formatted as a satirical infographic titled "The Top 6 Reasons This Infographic Is Just Wrong Enough to Sound Convincing." It systematically catalogs common tricks used by m

## The Joke A child asks his father: "Dad, what would happen if you threw a ball and it almost reached space, but then it came down through the atmosphere and started burning up?" The father, sitting

## The Joke A blues musician is performing on stage, singing about having "the blues" -- but his lyrics describe the condition in clinical neuroscience terms: "parasites on my cortex, decreasin' my s

## The Joke A demon or devil figure curses a man to live forever. The man is unimpressed, countering each supposed torment: forests will change, but he'll be famous as the world's oldest man; immorta

## The Joke A game of tag takes a dark philosophical turn. One child tags another and says "Tag! You're it!" but the tagged child launches into a nihilistic monologue: there is no objective meaning,

## The Joke This is a longer-format comic depicting what appears to be a political or public debate scenario. Multiple panelists or speakers make various arguments and counter-arguments before an aud

## The Joke The title panel reads: "If arithmetic were debated like religion." One person asks another a complicated arithmetic question (a large number times another large number divided by yet anot

## The Joke A parent tells their partner: "I plan to use reverse psychology to make my kid a physicist." In the next beat, the parent says to the child: "Girl! There's only one cross product you shou

## The Joke In the top panel, a modern-day professor or scholar presents an image of an ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail) to students, explaining it is "an ancient symbol representing the cycli

## The Joke Several academics from different fields each argue that God must share their profession. A mathematician says God must be a mathematician because the universe obeys rules. A physicist say

## The Joke The comic shows the back of a car with a bumper sticker that reads: "My Child's HONOR STUDENT Status is Best Understood as the Result of Educational Opportunities, Affluence, and Stable F

## The Joke A father, wearing sunglasses and a suit, drops his child off at college. Instead of a warm or encouraging send-off, he says: "Everyone lives a lie. Pick a lie you like." The caption reads

## The Joke The comic shows a platypus being loaded into what appears to be a large cannon or particle accelerator-like device. The platypus is launched at high speed and there is a "BOOM!" explosion

## The Joke A mother is reading a bedtime story to her daughter: "Monkey goes off on his way, but it's not a game this time. She must select the path!" The daughter asks "Oh my God! What happened?!"

## The Joke A man lying in a hammock with a woman muses philosophically about whether he is truly a "reasonable person who reaches their own conclusions" or whether his views are simply inherited fro

## The Joke A physicist dies and meets God. The physicist immediately starts asking God questions about the fundamental nature of reality — not theological questions, but physics questions. God becom

## The Joke The comic is titled "This is what it's like to learn endocrinology." A teacher begins explaining the steroid hormone synthesis pathway: "So 17-hydroxylvine becomes pregnenolone, which bec

## The Joke Batman declares he is "getting on in years" and "can't do this forever," so it is time for a new Batman to arise. He dramatically departs, and his protege (a young person) watches him go.

## The Joke The comic depicts a couple in bed where one partner (wearing a hat/headband) starts presenting graphs and data during an intimate moment. The comic shows a graph of arousal over time, and

## The Joke A man at a restaurant tells a waitress: "The bone in your sandwich represents impermanence." Below the panel, the caption reads: "All of my mistakes are performance art." The joke is tha

## The Joke The comic is a philosophical conversation between two people about the nature of perception and reality. One person explains that: - Dreams are essentially hallucinations your brain crea

## The Joke A woman excitedly announces to another person: "Oh my God! I figured out a way to perform any calculation that can be done on a computer, using only your hands!" A keyboard sits on the ta

## The Joke The comic is titled (implicitly) "Science Facts for Future Intolerable Roommates." It presents a series of factoids framed as fascinating science, but each one has a dark or unsettling tw

In this comic, a therapist is speaking to a patient during a session. The therapist delivers a brutally honest assessment, telling the patient that they should go back to their wife and apologize, not

This single-panel comic depicts a classic sitcom trope turned on its head. A man walks into a bedroom to find his two partners -- another man and a woman -- in bed together. The man in bed throws up h

This comic is a Halloween-themed strip featuring a parent and child at the door during trick-or-treating. In the first panel, someone at the door asks "Oooh! Are you dressed as Death, little man?" The

This comic plays on the classic childhood fear of monsters under the bed. A mother reassures her child, "Daddy, there's no monster under my bed." But the father, rather than simply comforting the chil

This comic tackles the logic behind age-based restrictions on pornography. In the first panel, a character asks "Why do we restrict pornography consumption based on age?" Another character explains th

In this comic, a Buddhist monk is marching in what appears to be a protest or demonstration, holding a picket sign. The sign uses the classic protest call-and-response format: "What do we want?" follo

This comic depicts a scene at what appears to be a bonobo reserve, where an experienced guide is introducing a new visitor to the primates. The guide enthusiastically declares that bonobos are "amazin

This comic shows the Sphinx from Greek mythology, but instead of posing its famous philosophical riddle ("What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"), it is using

This comic follows a man who, as a child, thinks to himself: "Hmm, I wonder what parents worry about now. I''d better send myself to the future as a spy." The strip then jumps forward 20 years, where

This comic presents a "Funtime Activity" suggesting that you take motivational quotes from famous speeches and change the attributions to history''s villains. The first example shows a person giving a

In this comic, a group of women at what appears to be a bachelorette party are playing a drinking game. The host announces she has discovered a container behind the couch that is not factory sealed. S

In this comic, a father is talking to his toddler, asking "Hey lil''' monkey. Can you tell daddy how many fingers is this many fingers?" The child happily responds "two finga" in adorable baby-talk. T

In this comic, a man on a date announces that before they begin, he wants to disclose that he has a condition where he reacts to situations with the inappropriate emotion. His date responds bluntly: "

This comic explores how different scientific disciplines approach the topic of sex, playing on stereotypes about each field. The header establishes the premise with a play on the idea that different t

This comic features August Mobius (depicted as an elderly Victorian-era gentleman) delivering the classic "when I was a boy" lecture to a younger person. However, instead of the usual cliched hardship

In this comic, a woman is explaining a sort of reverse-Idiocracy theory to a friend. She begins by noting that stupid people breed more than smart people, which might suggest that eventually everyone

This comic satirizes the misuse of statistics and misleading graphs in media. A professor-like figure explains what he calls the "fundamental law of media graph construction": that any two things that

This comic is presented in the style of a children'''s educational show called "Animal Pals!" with colorful cartoon animals sharing fun facts. A cheetah announces that it can run at speeds up to 70 mi

In this comic, a group of characters (who appear to be scheming villains or perhaps a militaristic organization) are discussing their plans to place missile bases at Lagrange points in space. Someone

This comic depicts Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in a scene styled after Arthur Conan Doyle'''s Victorian-era detective stories. Watson says "Pthirus pubis" and Holmes, not recognizing the term, muse

In this single-panel comic, a man in a suit shouts "Hooray!" while colorful streamers (red, yellow, and pink) shoot out from behind him, as if from a party popper or confetti cannon. The caption below

This comic is titled "Just once, I'''d like to see this" and imagines a fantasy scenario involving a politician being interviewed. In the first panel, a reporter says to a senator: "Senator, some peop

This comic depicts a scene between Herman Melville (the author of Moby-Dick) and what appears to be his editor. The editor says: "It'''s uh... a lovely statement, Mr. Melville, but I'''m going to remo

This comic features a couple learning about fetal development during pregnancy. In the first panel, a woman reads from a book: "According to this, our baby has kidneys as of this week." She then asks

This comic presents a four-panel grid asking the question: "How do we stop too much wealth accumulating in one place?" Three different perspectives are shown. The Optimist (a cheerful woman) says: "Gi