(Detective Comics 033, 1939)
Can't believe that I didn't think of this before but The Guy Who Shot Batman's Parents a) should already be here and b) is representative of a class of plot devices I'll be calling Narrative Footballs. Narrative Footballs are big pivotal events, usually related to a character's origin in some way, that get more and more significant over time and eventually become something that can be pinned to a villain in order to lend them a bit of gravitas. Sometimes they don't even start out as the actions of a person: while the the Explosion of Krypton eventually becomes a very popular item on various villains' C.V.s, it isn't even blamed on Kryptonian society for the first decade or so.
The Guy Who Shot Batman's Parents is just a guy until 1948, when he is identified as Joe Chill. I think he's mostly Joe Chill still, but sometimes he's the Joker (Batman (1989)) or Joe Chill was working for a big bad guy etc etc. I have no evidence here but I'll bet a dollar that there's a comic somewhere where it turns out that Ra's al Ghul was behind it.
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