Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

eye

2023-09-05 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
eye
Votey panel for eye
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 riff on the famous scene from Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus and then escapes by telling the Cyclops his name is "Nobody" (Greek: "Outis"). When Polyphemus cries out for help, he tells the other Cyclopes that "Nobody" is hurting him, so they ignore his pleas.

The joke imagines a funnier alternative: instead of "Nobody," Odysseus could have given an absurd fake full name -- "Adolf N. Sprick" -- so that the blinded Cyclops stumbles around screaming it in a rage, desperately searching for a person who doesn't exist. The caption points out that Odysseus "could've had so much more fun with Polyphemus," suggesting that the classic trick of using "Nobody" was clever but missed the comedic potential of making the Cyclops shout a ridiculous-sounding name for eternity.

The humor lies in the contrast between the dignified, ancient literary stratagem and the juvenile prank Odysseus could have pulled instead.

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