Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic is formatted as an educational segment titled "Know Your Hypothetical Particles!" featuring the tachyon -- a theoretical particle that travels backward in time. After noting its status as "unobserved," the comic lists its practical use as "fixing plot holes in science fiction shows."

The comic then illustrates this with a scenario where a TV writer named Deric is confronted about a plot hole -- why didn't the psychic character anticipate her friend's betrayal? The writers scramble and fire a "tachyon beam" at the script, leading to a hastily written scene where the psychic character conveniently detects "a tachyon signature" to explain away the inconsistency. The joke satirizes how science fiction shows use technobabble (especially tachyons) as a lazy deus ex machina to patch over sloppy writing, rather than as a genuine engagement with physics.