Adolf Hitler is very angry. Everything gets his goat, from Donald Trump to the recent crisis at Hyderabad Central University. Not really, but a sequence from a 2004 German biopic Downfall has been repurposed for the nth time to illustrate the situation of students who have been demanding justice for the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula and staging protests against Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile. In the spoof, Hitler discusses his aspirations for a Hindu country and takes digs at political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister for Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani.

The source for this ever-popular meme is the 2004 German war film Downfall (original title Der Untergang), a fictionalised account of the last ten days of the Nazi Party founder’s rule over Germany in 1945. In the film, Hitler (played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz) is holed up in a bunker while the Russian Red Army marches on his country.

In the sequence that has been endlessly parodied, Hitler is discussing his military campaign with his generals. When he is informed that they are losing the war, he erupts, accusing them of causing his downfall.

Parody videos that have retained the visual and audio narrative from the film but replaced the subtitles with original text have popped up ever since. So popular are these spoofs that a YouTube community specialises in making viral videos based on this particular scene.

Oliver Hirschbiegel, the director of Downfall, welcomed the comic tribute to his serious account. In a 2010 interview, Hirschbiegel said, “I think it’s only fair if now it’s taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like. The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality.” Hirschbiegel’s favourites include the parody in which Hitler finds out about Michael Jackson’s death.

However, the same year that Hirschbiegel gave his stamp of approval, the movie’s production company, Constantin Film, tried to have the parodies removed from YouTube. This led to the meta-video of Hitler reacting to his parodies being taken off the video sharing site. The spoofs have never stopped coming since.