Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This single-panel comic is presented as a "Life Tip: Parenthood is the wrong way to work out neuroses." A father is playing the classic children's toe-counting game "This Little Piggy" with a baby, but instead of the cheerful nursery rhyme, he launches into a dark, traumatic narrative: "This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. The piggy who stayed home had made an enemy back in the war who'd set a bomb in the piggies' car. A bomb meant for him, but indiscriminate in its death-dealing. Now, the piggy who stayed home lives with the ghost of happiness like an amputee lives with a phantom leg."

The humor comes from the jarring contrast between the innocent, playful context of the nursery rhyme and the grim, emotionally devastating story the father tells. The comic suggests the father is projecting his own psychological trauma and unresolved issues onto a simple childhood game, turning it into a vehicle for processing survivor's guilt and grief. The "life tip" framing adds to the comedy by presenting this deeply inappropriate parenting moment as a cautionary lesson, implying this is a common enough mistake to warrant a public service announcement.