Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The comic features a muscular man at a beach or pool, flexing and admiring his own prominent abdominal muscles. He notices gaps between the muscles and thinks that if he does enough pushups, perhaps h

This comic is a math and anatomy joke presented on a yellow sticky note. It sets up the problem with two measurements: L = average leg length = 0.9 m, and l = average erection length = 0.15 m (for mal

The comic is titled "Relationship Tip: Achieve Honest Compliments Through Clever Comma Usage." It presents two side-by-side panels. On the left, labeled "LIE," a woman tells a red-haired man, "You hav

The comic tells the story of a man who failed to get tenure in philosophy, so he quit academia. He moved home and now teaches middle school gym class. He notes that it is not the most rewarding job fo

The comic presents Saint Anselm's famous ontological argument for the existence of God, then applies the same logical structure to something absurd. In the first panel, labeled "Saint Anselm's Proof,"

The comic offers a humorous public service announcement for students writing English class essays. The setup reads: "Next time you need a quotation for an English class essay, I've got you covered." B

The comic imagines a future where artificial intelligence is advanced enough to require psychotherapy. A therapist asks a robot, "Why do you feel your mother never loved you?" The robot responds, "Bec

In this comic, a woman tells a man named Dad that she thinks he should talk to his son. The father approaches his son, who is sitting on a couch, and says something about growing a beard. The son push

This comic depicts a pair of dinosaurs in the aftermath of an asteroid impact. The skies are blackened with asteroid dust, and the T-Rex narrator solemnly observes that the cold will come soon, and wi

This comic is a satire of political and media rhetoric, presented as a news broadcast. A news anchor reports on an escalating series of government actions and surveillance measures, each one more extr

This lengthy comic satirizes cloud computing and data storage services by imagining catastrophic consequences of storing your brain "in the cloud." The comic opens with someone describing how they upl

This comic is a single panel showing two people in conversation about academic tenure. One person says, "We need a way to protect free and creative academic discourse." The other responds with the sug

## The Joke A character proposes a series of increasingly strained analogies ("what if people were rain?" "what if love were a bridge?") in an attempt to be profound. Another character keeps pointing

This comic traces the history of how society has responded to those who bring beneficial innovations, presented as a series of vignettes across different historical eras. It begins in an ancient or bi

This comic presents a couple lying in bed together. The woman exclaims in distress, "Oh God. It finally happened." When the man asks "What?", she responds simply: "Statistics." Below this scene is a g

This comic depicts what appears to be a creation myth or magical demonstration gone hilariously wrong. A mysterious, alien-like creature (resembling a pale, elongated being) appears in a dark, dramati

This comic plays with the concept of computation and simulation in a delightfully absurd way. A man holds up a piece of cheese and declares to a woman: "Technically true: every object is an analog com

This comic is titled "Why ''You Can''t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks'' in Two Graphs" and presents a clever psychological explanation for why older people tend to stop learning new things. The first gra

The comic opens with someone sharing the real-world fact that the American flags planted on the Moon during the Apollo missions have been bleached white by decades of solar radiation. A second person

This comic is a parody of Sherlock Holmes stories, set in the classic Victorian detective genre with Holmes and Watson in period attire. The comic plays on the trope of Holmes making brilliant deducti

The comic imagines Batman receiving a riddle from the Riddler, one of his classic villains. But instead of a typical riddle with a clever wordplay answer, the Riddler has written: "If the real part of

In this comic, a man who has just been dumped by Sally launches into an increasingly extreme nihilistic philosophical rant. He begins by noting that Sally has declared their love to be dead, but then

This comic presents a workplace scene framed like a game show. A boss tells an employee: "We asked 'Can you put in weekends for your first six months?' You answered 'Yes.' Accounting says I can award

This comic presents "A Simple Proposal to Stop Gerrymandering" in a mock-educational format. It lays out two rules: Rule 1 states that all districts in a state must have equal area (A_district = A_sta

In this comic, a person lying in bed reflects on turning a certain age, saying they are not sure they got everything they could have out of life. Another person responds with an extended meditation on

This single-panel comic shows a bearded man in Victorian-era clothing saying: "I'm sorry, but I only engage in sexual congress via the 69 position." Below the panel, a caption reads: "Vilfredo Pareto

In this comic, a man approaches a woman and asks "Can I give you my number?" She responds with "What? That's a bit presumptuous." The twist comes in the next panel, where the man says "Your number is

This comic shows a dominatrix-styled physics teacher explaining a concept while a person hangs suspended in bondage gear. She says: "And by suspending your servant along 3 different axes, you can dete

In this comic, a man encounters a genie and is granted three wishes. For his first wish, he asks for ten trillion tons of gold. The genie grants it but notes that the price of gold has inversely adjus

This single-panel comic is titled "The First Victim of Technological Acceleration Was Standup Comedy." It shows a standup comedian on stage delivering what starts as a classic observational comedy bit

This multi-panel comic depicts a hostage negotiation that goes hilariously off the rails. A police negotiator calls out to a hostage-taker, offering to give him whatever he wants. The hostage-taker re

This comic poses the question "What if Linnaeus had been a cat?" and imagines how biological taxonomy would look if it had been devised by a feline mind. A professor stands at a chalkboard explaining

This lengthy comic is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, but with a darkly comedic twist. The comic follows the familiar story structure: Dorothy and her companions (the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly

This comic shows two people playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. One player announces "Paper wins," but then immediately follows up with an existential observation: "But, like all victories, this one is bot

This comic shows a couple lying in bed at night having a conversation. One partner asks, "Do you ever lay awake at night and wonder if the body inside me will never stop growing?" They then launch int

This single-panel comic shows a person earnestly declaring: "I base my view of human nature on a six day long study of 22 non-random young males in which the experimenter was an active participant." T

This comic shows an older man, apparently a philosopher, sitting around a campfire with children at what appears to be a summer camp. He tells them: "If a parasite started eating your brain and very s

This is a lengthy multi-panel comic that appears to satirize democratic processes and voting. It opens with what seems to be a political scenario involving candidates or a debate. A ballot or survey i

In this comic, a man confidently tells a woman, "Baby, I don'''t mean to brag, but I'''m a student-loans-paid-offionaire." The woman appears flustered and impressed, clasping her hands together. The j

This comic shows a couple in an intimate moment. The woman asks the man, "Why do you always do that counter-clockwise motion?" The man, positioned below her, responds with a pseudo-scientific explanat

In this comic, a man excitedly tells a red-haired woman, "I found a way to increase your expected lifespan 20 years." She asks, "How?" and he enthusiastically replies, "Step over this invisible line!"

This comic depicts a workplace "morale booster" program. In the first panel, a woman presents to a group of employees, saying "Welcome to our morale booster program." In the subsequent panels, she exp

This comic shows Jesus on the cross, wearing his crown of thorns, with birds nesting in it. The caption reads: "Jesus''' day just went from bad to worse." The birds have made a nest in the thorny crow

This comic features a "Pro Tip" banner at the top that reads: "The '''quantum''' in quantum mechanics refers only to the existence of discrete quantities." Below, a woman with glasses says, "I only wo

This comic is a longer multi-panel strip exploring a mountain-climbing metaphor for the hedonic treadmill. In the first panel, a man climbing a mountain thinks, "If I could just get to the top of that

In this comic, a child runs to their father saying, "Daddy! I had a nightmare where we were attacked by clowns!" The father ominously responds, "That was no dream." In the next panel, the child notice

This comic is a multi-panel exploration of time machine paradoxes. A woman wearing glasses (the stereotypical SMBC scientist/nerd character) discusses time travel with another person. She proposes the

In this comic, a father (wearing glasses and a cap) is talking to his two young children about Ouija boards. He dismisses them with an unexpected argument: "Yeah, right. If those things really worked,

In this comic, Zach Weinersmith reimagines the Garden of Eden story from the Book of Genesis with a darkly comedic twist. In the first panel, labeled "EDEN," God tells Eve that there is only one rule:

This comic is a long-form visual gag titled "How to Solve a Physics Problem," which takes the reader through an increasingly painful and relatable 15-step journey of working through a physics calculat