misquotation
Explanation
This comic is about the famous misquotation often attributed to Dostoevsky: "If God is dead, everything is permitted." In the first panel, a character states this quote and attributes it to Dostoevsky. Another character corrects him, noting that the quote doesn't appear in that exact form in Dostoevsky's work — it's a paraphrase or misattribution that has taken on a life of its own. The first character insists "We didn't say that!" but then, in ironic fashion, the correcting character tells him "Don't do it" — and the first character immediately says "If God is dead, misquotation is permitted," twisting the very quote under discussion into a joke about its own misattribution. The humor lies in the recursive irony: the act of discussing whether the quote is real becomes itself an occasion to misquote, and the punchline suggests that without absolute authority (God), even accurate citation becomes optional.