Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic depicts a man waking up screaming in bed next to his partner. He says "AAAAH!" and she asks "What?!" He describes his nightmare: he had a dream where his parents were zombies, and they came

This comic presents a chart titled "Know Your Branches of Economics" with two axes. The vertical axis (in red) measures "how well theory describes scenarios it considers," ranging from "describes well

This comic tells the story of a time traveler who went back in time to stop Hitler. However, she did not have the nerve to kill him directly, so instead she arranged for an Ohio university to offer hi

This comic shows a dramatic confrontation between two people. A man on the left shouts in shock: "It was all a social experiment?! Everyone was just acting?!" A woman on the right -- an older scientis

This comic features a conversation between two people, apparently at a social or professional gathering. A man declares: "I'''m a social anarchist. I don'''t believe in cultural contracts, artificial

In this comic, a man excitedly tells a woman that he got her "that bread machine" she wanted. She responds with confusion, saying "What? I said DREAD machine," and clarifies that she is "pretty sure"

This comic features a conversation between a woman and a small alien creature (a recurring SMBC character) lying on a grassy hill. The woman asks the alien, "Do you ever wonder if it'''s all just mean

This single-panel comic is captioned "A good grasp of literature is valuable in any profession." A woman asks a doctor, "How did my husband'''s surgery go?" The doctor, wearing a white coat and sungla

This long-form comic is an elaborate retelling and extension of Plato'''s Allegory of the Cave. The opening panels set up the classic scenario: a professor-like figure explains that prisoners are chai

This comic is titled "Do you ever wonder what happened AFTER a famous quote was spoken?" It depicts Winston Churchill in a formal setting, delivering his famous retort. A woman says to him, "Mister Ch

This comic presents a "Funtime Activity: Finding Quotations That Use Words Whose Meanings Have Changed Over Time." The episode featured is "Washington to Hamilton, 1797." It shows George Washington wr

This comic shows a father lecturing his son about online trolling. The father says, "I'''m disappointed, son. You know, when I was a lad, I surely never said something offensive just to elicit a react

This comic is a sweeping, sentimental meditation on human progress and the wonder of new life. It opens with a figure contemplating history, noting how after watching the story of great people from cu

This comic features a person with spiral-shaped glasses making an increasingly absurd argument about vegetarianism and meat consumption. They begin by stating they have decided to become a vegetarian

This comic depicts a scene in what appears to be an Old West saloon or a bar with a Western theme. A character announces: "Okay, I'''ve got a perfectly rational, perfectly reasonable proposition for y

In this comic, a person is at the bedside of what appears to be a dying robot or AI. The human says they can feel the robot'''s emotional gratitude fading fast, and urges the machine to tell them what

In this two-panel comic, a person is reading a book and complaining loudly about grammar errors: "Ugh. Another grammar error. Oh and it'''s in a run-on sentence. Why do they even let uneducated people

## The Joke A father sits his son down for "the talk," which the reader initially assumes will be the classic awkward conversation about sex. Instead, the father explains to his child that he is stat

This comic features a conversation between what appears to be a mother and her two daughters, one brunette and one redhead. The brunette daughter accuses the mother of playing favorites, pointing out

In this comic, a man confronts another man (implied to be Michelangelo or a similar Renaissance sculptor) about sleeping with his wife. The confrontation involves a man saying "You slept with my wife,

This comic depicts a group of kids playing a game of Truth or Dare with a robot called "Auto-Tron 4000." One kid asks the robot who it has a crush on. The robot objects, saying it'''s not fair because

In this comic, an elderly man at what appears to be a dinner party announces his unusual dying wish: "When I die, I want my body used to grow a plant." When asked what kind, he reveals it is a cucumbe

This is a longer comic depicting a superhero scenario. A villain attacks and a female superhero responds. The comic appears to satirize the way female superheroes are depicted in comics, with the hero

In this comic, a couple is lying in bed at night. The woman wakes up and exclaims "Gah!" then confesses to her partner: "I dreamed that I cheated on you with your best friend. I feel terrible." The ma

This comic imagines dinosaurs reacting to an approaching asteroid. In the first panel, one dinosaur says "The asteroid'''s here" and another responds "We'''d better evolve into birds." They then chant

This comic is a parody of the Batman universe, specifically the iconic Bat-Signal. Batman is shown looking at the Bat-Signal in the sky, but instead of being a call to action, the signal operator is t

In this comic, a woman (Aunt Jessica) is telling a small child that it is time to put away their blocks and go to sleep. The child responds ominously with "Wheels are turning, Aunt Jessica. Wheels are

This comic depicts a conversation between an astronaut or space explorer and a person back on Earth. The astronaut has apparently returned from visiting two planets and is being interviewed about the

This is a long-form comic about zombies and the concept of consciousness and parasitism. It opens with what appears to be a philosophical lecture or presentation about how organisms can be controlled

In this comic, a woman returns home to find her husband in a feral, disheveled state. She is shocked and asks what happened. He explains that she indirectly trained him to play video games whenever sh

This comic depicts a scene at what appears to be a doctor's office. A shirtless man declares that his body is "held up by the elegance of modern medicine and controlled by brain worms" (or something s

This comic features an old man (who appears to be a deceased relative or mentor) reading a letter that was apparently arranged to be sent after his death. The letter explains that if the recipient is

In this comic, a parent offers their child a Batman comic to read, and the child eagerly agrees. A time skip of six months later reveals the twist: the "Batman comic" was actually a speech bubble wrap

This comic plays on the classic alien encounter trope. A human woman meets an alien and immediately asks "Oh my God an alien! Are you gonna anal probe me?" -- referencing the well-known pop culture as

In this comic, someone has built a cat translator so they can finally understand what their cat Scruffles is saying. When the cat says "Mow" (a meow), the couple looks at the translation screen expect

This comic presents the premise "History becomes more sensible when you imagine its participants as any other mammal." The single panel shows two dogs acting out a historical scenario: one dog urgentl

In this comic, a scientist presents her research on time travel to an audience. She explains that after years of research, they have confirmed that time travel is possible, but they can only travel to

In this comic, one person tells another "I don'''t believe in love. It'''s just a bunch of chemical reactions." This is a common reductionist argument sometimes made by people who want to sound scient

## The Joke Scientists develop a test that can perfectly predict whether a child will grow up to be a great scientist. They administer it to millions of children. The test reveals that many potential

This comic satirizes television news coverage and its tendency toward sensationalism. A news reporter is covering a violent incident, but a guest (wearing a hat) interjects with a dose of rational per

In this comic, a woman is giving a lecture at a blackboard, explaining a formula for what she calls the "mean date-free path." She states that it is calculated by taking the inhabited volume of Earth,

This comic depicts a man buying a cat and gradually regretting it as the cat turns out to be deeply nihilistic. In the first panels, the cat speaks to its owner with increasingly bleak philosophical s

This comic and the following day'''s comic (2013-08-10) form a pair with a shared theme about Hitler and counterfactual history. In this single-panel comic, three friends are sitting at what appears t

This comic is a companion piece to the previous day'''s comic about the "Nay-Dolf" pub game. In this single panel, a mother asks her son "Where are you going, son?" and he replies with determination:

This comic takes the classic fairy tale of Rapunzel and applies practical thinking to it. In the first panel, a princess trapped in a tower calls out to a knight below: "Sir Knight! You must climb my

This comic imagines a far future where robots have become the dominant intelligent beings, and humans are reduced to the role of malfunctioning gadgets. In the first panel, a robot calls tech support

In this comic, a child runs to his father'''s room at night with the classic childhood fear: "Daaad! Daaad! There'''s a monster under my bed!" The father, rather than offering comfort or checking unde

The comic pokes fun at macroeconomics and its predictive limitations. In the first panel, someone asks whether macroeconomics is a science. The response is that it is a social science, meaning it is n

The comic shows a female professor standing at a lectern announcing to her students that she will be taking a 9-month sabbatical to "fire up the old onboard 3D printer." The caption below reads: "And

The comic is titled "People Are Weird" and presents two contrasting panels that highlight an ironic inconsistency in how people approach their careers and passions. In the first panel, a woman in casu