From 'Sound of Music' to 'All the Money …,' Christopher Plummer was irreplaceable

Every great actor should be fortunate enough to become an internet meme in their 80s. Christopher Plummer, who died Friday at 91, experienced his own late-in-life social-media anointing at least twice over.

There was the oft-recurring GIF of Capt. von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," Plummer's best-known and most inescapable role, tearing a Third Reich flag in two — an image that has become handy Twitter shorthand for anti-neo-Nazi resistance over the past few years. That quick single shot is a marvelous bit of acting in itself: You can't help but notice Plummer's ramrod-straight military-man posture or the tight-lipped expression playing on his handsome face, a grimace teetering on the edge of a smile. And then, of course, there are those two swift, satisfying rips right down the middle of the swastika. (He really puts his arms into it.)

Another Plummer meme caught