Subconscious
Explanation
The Joke
The comic imagines Sigmund Freud analyzing the game of Tetris through his signature psychoanalytic lens. A figure resembling Freud sits at a computer and narrates Tetris gameplay in absurdly sexualized Freudian terms: "The player attempts to create a gap, then awaits a long straight block to completely fill it, thus sublimating his desire to submit to a more powerful male." The caption below reads: "Sadly, Freud never played Tetris."
The Humor
The humor comes from applying Freud's famously over-the-top psychosexual interpretive framework to something as innocent and mundane as Tetris. Freud was notorious for interpreting virtually all human behavior as expressions of repressed sexual desires, and SMBC takes this to its logical extreme by having him sexualize a simple puzzle game about fitting geometric blocks together. The word "sadly" in the caption is ironic -- the implication is not that it is sad Freud missed out on Tetris, but rather that it is amusing (or perhaps a relief) that he never got to project his psychosexual theories onto it. The comedy also works because the Tetris gameplay description -- creating a gap and waiting for the long piece to fill it -- does, when described in Freud's terms, sound vaguely suggestive, which is exactly the kind of coincidence Freud would have seized upon as "proof" of his theories.
References
- Sigmund Freud (1856--1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis, famous for interpreting human behavior through the lens of unconscious sexual and aggressive drives. His concept of sublimation refers to channeling unacceptable desires into socially acceptable activities.
- Tetris is the iconic 1984 puzzle video game in which players rotate and position falling geometric blocks to complete horizontal lines. The long straight piece (the "I-piece") is the most sought-after block, as it can clear four lines at once when dropped into a tall gap.