Remember the Angry Hitler meme? It was that thing from the mid-2000s where people would excerpt the most intense part of the war-room encounters from the German World War II movie Downfall and replace the subtitles to make it seem like Adolph Hitler was going on absurd rants about things like the iPhone, being forced to see the movie You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel actually told Vulture that he thought the parodies were hilarious, but the production company behind the movie disapproved, saying it was disrespectful to the subject matter — which is an extremely valid position to take. But even the producers might be able to get behind the Jojo Rabbit marketing team’s resurrection of the meme.
Jojo Rabbit is, of course, the World War II satire directed by Taika Waititi in which he also plays the the imaginary friend of a Hitler Youth boy. That imaginary friend happens to be a doofy Adolph Hitler. In the meme clip, posted to the Jojo Rabbit social page today, Hitler is on the verge of collapse in his bunker when he finds out Waititi, a Polynesian-Jewish man, will be playing him in a new movie. The absolute freakout that ensues really seems like the exact reaction Waititi would have hoped for in making a mockery of the Reich leader. This is what the Angry Hitler meme was made for. It’s what the Angry Hitler meme has been building toward for more than a decade. A job well done here.