Haunted House
You can leave at any time through the door over there. It's a Louisville door, so you'll need to find a compatible knob. No, don't be silly, that one is a Lexington knob! Of course it won't fit.
You can leave at any time through the door over there. It's a Louisville door, so you'll need to find a compatible knob. No, don't be silly, that one is a Lexington knob! Of course it won't fit.
The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and ANSI (American National Standards Institute) are organizations that create standards for commonly used objects such as electrical sockets, preferably so that there would exist standardized forms everywhere (or at least across large areas). The comic depicts an office Halloween party, which is a common event on the celebration of Halloween. A "haunted house" is a house or other building/room designed to induce fright in the participants, typically by including well-known/cultural scary elements such as vampires or zombies. The haunted house in this comic is tailored to scare members of these organizations by suggesting a world where nothing is standardized (e.g. different electrical wiring from state to state). The title text furthers the joke by implying that something which is usually standardized (door/doorknob interfaces) would be different from city to city even within a state. Further, it confounds types of "knobs", where "Lexington" is a hardware style collection for actual drawer knobs and such, whereas the "Louisville Knobs" are a set of geological mound features (Knobs region) in Kentucky. While such a joke would likely only irritate ISO members, the comic jokes that they fear even the idea of such a world.
In reality, the electrical supply is standardized within any given country (usually...), but it does vary worldwide, with different countries providing different voltages, frequency, and outlet shapes. The International Electrotechnical Commission maintains a web site where these differences are catalogued. International travelers often require adapters that will plug into different outlets and may adjust the voltage and/or frequency to one their devices can use, something for which standardization would be much appreciated, although the cost of such worldwide standardization would likely render it infeasible.
Other comics about standardization include 927: Standards, 1179: ISO 8601, 1643: Degrees.