Paul Rudd has a beautiful tradition every time he guests on Conan: He promises Conan O’Brien an exclusive clip from whatever new project he’s there to push, but instead exclusively plays the same cheesy bit of the 1988 E.T. wannabe movie Mac and Me. He’s been doing this for years now, and somehow, like comedy wine, it only gets funnier with age.

Then there’s Adam Pally–most notably of The Mindy Project and the upcoming movie Night Owls–who has turned the “weird Conan guest traditions” game on its head. As explained in the video above, each time he visits the show, he does so in costume, and his dress-up silliness have been snowballing into an incredible mass of skill. First he wore a tux, then he was a Buckingham Palace guard, then he was Borat.

The only disappointing part about his appearance on the show this past week is that we’re not sure how he’s going to top himself next time, because he showed up as an insane hybrid of Jim Carrey’s The Mask and Abraham Lincoln.

Pally weaves the tale of how this masterful moment in cosplay came to be, saying he was first going to go as The Mask, then changed his mind and decided on our country’s 16th president but forgot to cancel his green-face make-up guy. Possibly the best part of the whole ordeal is when Conan loses his mind after Pally tells him how much the costume cost.

We won’t spoil the dollar figure, but it’s a hilariously exorbitant amount of money for a one-off gag. Oh, to be wealthy, childish and have a national television platform on which to carry out your most financially irresponsible of comic whims.