Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The comic opens with the premise that "any joke that ends with a pun can be converted to an action movie scene." It then takes the classic "frayed knot" joke -- in which a piece of string walks into a bar and, when asked if it is a string, replies "No, I'm a frayed knot" (a pun on "afraid not") -- and reimagines it as a dark, dramatic thriller.

In this version, the setup involves two shady characters discussing someone named Domingo, who was tied in loops and had his head cut into strips (as one would do to fray a piece of rope). There is a mysterious voice change, an explosion, and rising suspense as one character realizes the voice sounds like the supposedly dead Domingo. The punchline arrives when the battered survivor crawls into a bar and delivers the classic line: "Sorry, patron. I'm a frayed knot." The comic demonstrates that pun-based jokes, when given enough dramatic buildup, can indeed feel like action movie climaxes.