Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic parodies superhero team dynamics by reimagining the "we need to talk" breakup conversation in a superhero context. A woman in a superhero costume tells her partner Tom, "Tom, I think we sho

This single-panel comic offers a wry observation about the psychological appeal of mathematics. A person holding a pencil cheerfully declares: "Wow! Instead of being angry about twenty things, I'''m r

This comic is a multi-panel satire about economics, specifically the concept of the demand curve and what happens when a supervillain tries to exploit it. The comic opens with the premise that "as we

## The Joke God receives prayers from humans and processes them like a customer service queue. Most prayers are contradictory (two opposing teams praying to win the same game), petty, or physically i

This comic pokes fun at cat owners and their tendency to believe their cat is special and unique. A man (possibly a researcher or interviewer) approaches a cat owner and asks, "So, I hear you have a c

This comic plays on the concept of supervillain naming conventions and causes of death. The main panel is designed as a news website called "NEWSnet" with a headline reading "MYSTERIOUS VILLAIN STRIKE

This comic examines the famous Benjamin Franklin quote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." The first panel presents this

This comic features a philosopher delivering a grand existential monologue about the meaning of life. He declares that he has read a great deal of philosophy about what we are, why we are, where we ar

This comic draws a parallel between shady practices in two different academic departments. In the first panel, set in the Economics Department, a student who is not doing well on an exam asks the prof

This comic plays on the idea that using certain slurs or outdated language is a telltale sign that someone is from the past. A person with brown hair angrily insists that they are not "a mysterious tr

This comic is a satirical retelling of the classic fairy tale "The Frog Prince" with a scientific twist. A princess encounters a frog who claims to be a cursed prince and asks her to kiss him so he wi

This comic is a joke about floating-point arithmetic errors in computer science. In the first panel, a robot sits at a computer. In the second panel, we see a flashback labeled "Earlier..." showing th

This comic satirizes self-regulatory bodies and industry rating systems, using a childrens lemonade stand as a stand-in for real-world industries. A girl runs a lemonade stand and proudly announces th

This comic is titled "Cosmology Has Really Improved My Age Insults." A younger man cheerfully asks his elderly father, "Hey Dad! Remember when quark-gluon plasma condensed into matter?" The father, an

This is a long-form philosophical comic about what the author calls "The Falling Problem." A parent explains to a child that when you study physics, you realize that if you were dropped from a plane w

This comic depicts a psychiatry student practicing therapy on a medical cadaver (a dead body used for medical training). The student, dressed formally and holding notes, says to the corpse lying on a

This comic presents a pie chart titled "Leading Causes of Death in the USA" with "Source: NIH" written below the title, lending it a veneer of official authority. The chart includes real categories li

This comic is a mostly wordless action sequence about two ninjas -- one in dark blue/purple and one in dark red/maroon -- who spot each other at night and charge toward one another as if preparing for

This comic depicts a conversation between a human woman and an alien (a green-skinned being referred to as a Zorblaxian) about ethics and the nature of human values. The alien says its species believe

A younger man approaches an older professor to discuss the professor's extensive body of written work. He reveals that over the past 50 years, the professor has written 37 books, and the young man wro

The comic is a single large panel showing a person contentedly reading a book. The text on the book's page reads: "All of your biases have at some point been confirmed by anecdote." Below the panel, a

A child asks his father, "Dad, what is love?" The father responds with a poetic and paradoxical definition: "Love is a burden that lifts, a bind that frees, a delicate glass that strengthens when drop

A woman tells her partner, "Every time you tell me you love me, I die a little." The man reacts with shock ("Oh my God"), but she quickly explains that she means it literally: technically, while he is

The comic shows a single panel featuring three dinosaurs (likely T. rexes). One dinosaur is wearing what appears to be Google Glass-style smart glasses and enthusiastically says, "It's amazing technol

A woman explains to a man the concept of "Zahavi Handicapping" -- an evolutionary biology principle where an animal develops a trait or behavior that is burdensome in order to signal to potential mate

A woman is cooing over a baby (or young child), saying "Who's a cutie? Who's my little genetic payload? You are! You are!" An older person (likely a grandparent) objects: "Don't say that!" They contin

A man tells his engineer partner, "I know you engineers aren't much into avant-garde jazz because it's too different, or 'not really music.' But, I love you, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite

The comic explores three stages of children's credulity. The first section, captioned "Small children will believe anything you say," shows a parent telling a small child: "The universe started five m

The comic features a professor explaining the mathematical concept of "normal" irrational numbers. He begins: "An irrational number is called 'normal' if all the digits to the right of the decimal fol

This comic imagines Zeus as a rapper. In the single panel, Zeus (depicted as a muscular, bearded figure) is rapping to a woman: "Drop your thong, hop in a pond, I'm gonna turn into a duck and we gon'

The comic is titled "This Is Why People Should Learn Statistics" and contrasts two scenarios to highlight how badly humans assess risk. In the first panel, a man passionately declares that "we must ta

The comic depicts a somber, bearded 19th-century figure quoting the famous line: "For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" The caption below reveals: "John Gre

This comic depicts a police raid on a high school prom, where officers announce they've received reports of "an unintentional boner" and order all young men standing an awkward distance from their dan

The comic shows a professor reading a student's paper marked with an "F." He remarks, "My God. This student can barely construct a sentence. He's really struggling with university." He then says thoug

The comic shows a flat, toad-like creature with small triangular shapes embedded in its back, while a voice from above (implied to be God) exclaims: "Nope. Nope nope nope. That's enough. Evolution is

This comic presents "Lex Luthor's" step-by-step plan to kill Superman, rendered as an absurdly overcomplicated scheme. Step 1: Place deuterium capsules inside sponge spheres. Step 2: Send them to Clar

The comic is captioned "Before the Internet" and shows a man lamenting that as technology improves, powerful people have more ability to use private information against citizens. He then has a eureka

The comic depicts an intimate scene where a man cries out "Ow! What are you doing down there?" His partner explains that she's using the "Monte Carlo method" to figure out how to touch him. She descri

The comic shows a mother answering what is implied to be a child's question about where babies come from. She starts with the classic euphemism about a "special kind of together-hug" but then goes off

The comic opens with two praying mantises mating enthusiastically. Afterward, the female tells the male to eat her head. He's confused -- "What? Eat your head?" She insists: "Eat my head!" When he ask

This comic references a real biological phenomenon known as the "winner-loser effect" in animal competition. When animals compete for dominance, winners experience a surge in testosterone while losers

This comic plays on the concept of genetic similarity between humans. An alien named Mendax confesses to cheating on his human partner with another human named Robert. The alien's excuse is that human

The comic is titled "How to Make a Russian Literature Professor Cry in 3 Seconds" and shows a student looking at a syllabus and remarking, "Huh. I don't see any Ayn Rand on the syllabus." The professo

This is an extended multi-panel comic that tells a story about satellites (or space debris) approaching Earth and the ensuing political, scientific, and military response. The comic appears to follow

## The Joke A philosopher presents a rigorous logical argument that leads to an absurd conclusion (like "chairs don't exist" or "you can't actually know anything"). When challenged, the philosopher i

The comic is titled "What's the Use of Existentialism?" and presents a scenario where a woman is tied to a post, about to face a firing squad. She makes a joke, asking the firing squad, "If I want to

This single-panel comic shows a man dressed in elaborate royal attire -- a crown, fur-trimmed robe -- imperiously commanding, "Bring me the mingled blood of a thousand forest dwellers!" The caption be

This comic features a genie-like figure offering a man three wishes, specifically recommending he use them to change bad decisions from his past. The man refuses with a common philosophical platitude:

A child calls out to his dad that there's a monster under his bed. The child then describes the monster in alarming detail: "He came back from the dead, and he's covered in blood, and he says I won't

This comic shows a wedding scene where a bride asks her father why he's crying. The father responds with bewilderment: "I... I don't know. It's as if a module of my brain completely inverted when your