Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

anywhere

2022-05-08 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
You are viewing an older revision of this explanation (2026-03-14 16:13:50). View current version →
anywhere
Votey panel for anywhere
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic is a bedroom humor strip playing on the phrase "you can put it anywhere you want."

The entire comic takes place in near-total darkness (the panels are almost entirely black, with only the characters' eyes visible as white dots). One partner tells the other "You can put it anywhere you want," and the other responds with confusion: "Anywhere? What do you mean anywhere?"

The confused partner points out "It's not like there's 83 options back here," and asks "Have you looked in a mirror before? Or read an anatomy book for children?" They compare the situation to going to an ice cream shop that only has chocolate and vanilla, but the clerk says "you can have ANY flavor you want" -- the excessive freedom is meaningless when the choices are so limited.

The punchline comes when the frustrated partner says "Okay, that'll do. I am turning on the lights," and the other responds with yet another version of the same joke: "You can flip the switch to ANY setting you want" -- even though a light switch only has two positions (on and off).

The humor works on multiple levels: the absurdity of offering unlimited choice where very few options exist, the awkwardness of the intimate situation, and the running gag of the "anywhere/any" phrasing being applied to increasingly binary situations. The darkness of the panels is both literal (the lights are off) and a visual device that lets the comic explore risque territory while showing nothing.

View History (1) Original Comic