Jerry Holkins kept his word.
When he took the stage on Friday alongside his Penny Arcade counterpart Mike Krahulik for a PAX East Q&A, he was dressed as a robot.
This is Kickstarter's fault.
After the pair took to the crowdfunding platform last year, they added a stretch goal that would force Holkins to cosplay as whatever fans wanted him to. People could have chosen Bayonetta. They could have chosen Sailor Moon.
They chose a metal robot known as the Fruit Fucker.
"So, it turns out when you offer a stretch goal for Kickstarter, you've got to be real careful what you promise."
And when Holkins rounded the corner in front of an auditorium filled with Penny Arcade fans, the crowd went wild.
"So, it turns out when you offer a stretch goal for Kickstarter, you've got to be real careful what you promise," he said over the applause.
Over the next hour and 15 minutes, the pair fielded questions from more than 40 fans, who'd queued up before the duo had even taken the stage.
The questions ranged from the innocuous — several asked for Dungeons and Dragons advice, others asked about the process of creating their comic strip — to the bizarre, as evidenced by questions about how much foreskin is too much foreskin, and the guy who asked if they took "sexual inventory of themselves" as they stood naked in the mirror every morning. They answered everything dutifully (two pounds and yes, respectively).
About the only thing they wouldn't do was surrender any part of the growing collection of whoopie pies that fans had brought and delivered alongside their questions.
A panel that could have gone anywhere took a turn for the serious at the end. It was a question about anxiety, which Krahulik suffers from and has addressed in public forums like Reddit. The questioner said he had been "picked on quite a bit" and his immediate family had battled addiction. And though he was quick to point out that he'd had a good life, he suffered from anxiety.
"I think the big thing is that it's okay to take medicine if you're sick," Krahulik said. "If you hurt your arm, the doctor would give you medicine. But if where you're hurt is in your head, then there's a stigma attached to it."
Krahulik said it took a group of friends and family to convince him to try Lexipro.
"I'm here to tell you, it changes your life," he said. "It made everything better."
After apologizing for speaking seriously while dressed like the Fruit Fucker, Holkins gave his own advice.
"It is alright for a man not to be 100 percent strong 100 percent of the time."