I sympathize with trying to make a callback you find hilarious and witty, and everyone thinks you are just being a crude dck. This happened to me in high school and a few times I was self-aware enough to recognize after. At no point was I in front of a 4k camera attached to a super-computer and a high-bandwidth connection to the net.
Apple is trying to live in the future, sells luxury devices and has been positioning itself as the Good Place for your digital life. If my man here was so influential, and this was some random event, it'd be handled differently. Instead, he was thrown out the airlock nearly immediately. Clearly this shows that:
He has absolutely been tagged on this before internally, officially or not. * He is replaceable and they've had a contingency in place for a minute now.
I'm might be wrong, this is speculation (but pretty sound speculation I think).
Even so, you know DAMNED well that when some direct-report(s) brought up concern that "The Blevinator" would be hard to replace, Tim Cook had to suppress a laugh and the urge to ask them to hold his wine.