The Western Australian technician was dismissed from a BP refinery after after he used the famously parodied bunker scene from the 2004 film Downfall where Bruno Ganz as Hitler thunders at his generals.
BP had said it was "highly offensive and inappropriate" but a federal court ruled that it was unreasonable to say the meme had likened managers to Nazis. In the words of a union official, "a few stuffed shirts didn't get a joke".
Despite the subject matter, the Downfall scene has for years proved amazingly adaptable to very different situations about anyone in a crisis.
Its comedy is in the way the people around Hitler nervously impart bad news - his generals have failed and the war is lost - and his mixture of shaking suppressed emotion and explosion of frothing anger. He initially is in denial, then blasts others, but has to face defeat. The New York Times wrote of it: "Something in the spectacle of an autocrat falling to pieces evidently has widespread appeal".
The parodies are resubtitled to cover any topics from politics to celebrities, sports and very small in-jokes. Trump and Hillary Clinton have been among the political figures drawn into the meme, but many of the parodies do not turn the subject into Hitler. For instance in one, Trump argues with 'Hitler' at a coronavirus press briefing.
No doubt the Downfall meme and various slices of satire will swamp social media as the high-stakes US election nears.
