2009-11-28
Explanation
This comic features a bespectacled professor-type character (identified in the caption as Professor Bennet) presenting an argument to another man. He instructs the man to "Think of the strangest thing that's true," and the man agrees. Then the professor says, "Now add a monkey dressed as Hitler." The man responds with an awed "My God..." The caption reads: "Professor Bennet provides his proof that the truth is, in fact, not stranger than fiction."
The comic is a humorous take on the common saying "truth is stranger than fiction." Professor Bennet's "proof" that this saying is wrong is elegantly simple: take any true thing, no matter how strange, and you can always make it stranger by adding a fictional element (in this case, a monkey dressed as Hitler). Since fiction can always pile on additional absurdities without being constrained by reality, fiction will always be stranger than truth. It's a silly but logically sound reductio ad absurdum that deflates the popular aphorism.
The votey panel shows a diagram labeled "Please use this diagram when demonstrating the proof," depicting a monkey with an arrow labeled "monkey" and a footnote reading "dressed as Hitler." This is a parody of academic papers and their formal diagrams, treating this ridiculous argument as though it were a legitimate scholarly proof deserving of proper visual aids and documentation.