Page 169 – …and that was BEFORE he got angry
The elevator bit is a little in-joke for everyone who was at Animazment this year. They too turned off the elevators, and there were a number of people with tired feet who probably would have done EXACTLY this if they had access to a giant robot. Actually, who am I kidding? If ANY of us had a giant robot, we’d rampage just for the heck of it.
Speaking of anime conventions, hello to anyone from Otakon just discovering this comic! I’m writing this several days early, so I don’t know if there’s any in-jokes I can share with you guys yet. Well, I guess you just have to come back Tuesday to find out!
Turning off the escalators sounds like an Otakon in-joke…
It definitely applies to Otakon, but the specific inspiration was Animazement’s first year in the Raleigh Convention Center. It was still a pretty new facility at the time, and they were pretty nervous about geek breaking stuff, to the point that they preemptively shut off the escalators to make sure no costumes got stuck in the steps.
Honestly, I suspect that some Mad Scientist disconnected the power for the escalators to power some machine, and it was reconnected by the staff within five minutes. I wouldn’t even be overly surprised if it was Dr Caligari himself that disconnected them to power something he was in the middle of making, left to get some more parts, and got annoyed at the fact that they weren’t working when he tried to return with his parts, forgetting that he had disconnected them himself.