Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This wordless comic offers a dark reimagining of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer story. In the first panel, a newborn fawn lies next to its mother while a large buck (presumably the father) looks on. In the second panel, the fawn is revealed to have a glowing red nose -- the signature trait of Rudolph -- but the scene is presented not as magical but as an alarming birth defect, with what appear to be drops of blood around the nose.

In the final panel, the buck violently attacks another male reindeer, suggesting he suspects the red-nosed fawn is not his offspring and that another male reindeer fathered the unusual-looking calf. The comic reframes the beloved children's story through the lens of actual animal behavior, where males will fight rivals and may reject offspring that do not appear to be their own. It is a characteristically SMBC move to take a wholesome cultural touchstone and reinterpret it through a brutally realistic biological lens, just in time for Christmas.