Origin of Batman
Written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger, it depicts a young Bruce Wayne witnessing his parents' murder at the hands of a mugger.
Bruce is brought up in Wayne Manor, and leads a happy and privileged existence until the age of eight, when his parents are killed by a small-time criminal named Joe Chill while on their way home from a movie theater.
I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible..." As if responding to his desires, a bat suddenly flies through the window, inspiring Bruce to craft the Batman persona.
[2][better source needed] Batman's origin is expanded upon once again in Detective Comics #235 (June 1956), which recasts the Waynes' murder not as a random mugging, but an assassination.
In this story, Batman learns that mob boss Lew Moxon hired Chill to kill the Waynes as revenge for Thomas testifying against him 10 years before hand.
Media scholars Roberta Pearson and William Uricchio, in their 1991 work The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media, also noted beyond the origin story and such events as the introduction of Robin, "Until recently, the fixed and accruing and hence, canonized, events have been few in number",[3] a situation altered by an increased effort by later Batman editors such as Dennis O'Neil to ensure consistency and continuity between stories.
[10][11] In an interview promoting the release of The Dark Knight Rises, actor Christian Bale described the deaths of Bruce's parents as a source of arrested development: "The thing is, he is still that child, basically.
The murder takes place at 10:47 p.m. Batman accesses the Batcave through Wayne Manor by turning the hands of a grandfather clock to this time.
Batman: Dark Victory depicts the Wayne murders as the main cause of much of the corruption and crime in Gotham City: once it became clear that even wealthy, important people could be murdered so easily, citizens began to lose faith in the police, and the police themselves started to lose faith in their importance, leading to corruption within the force.
[citation needed] Batman #430 includes a scene in which, on the day of his and Martha's murder, Thomas Wayne is having trouble with some investments, and is going to sell short.
[20] In Tim Burton's Batman, Joe Chill robs Bruce Wayne's parents before his associate Jack Napier shoots them both.
Most notably, in the Justice League Unlimited episode "For the Man Who Has Everything", an adaptation of the comic story of the same name, Batman is temporarily put under the effects of the alien plant Black Mercy and hallucinates that their deaths never happened, with Thomas Wayne successfully fighting off Joe Chill.
In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy, Bruce Wayne's parents Thomas and Martha were murdered by low life mugger Joe Chill, who is arrested soon after.
Bruce soon learns from Ra's that he and the League of Shadows were indirectly responsible for the death of his parents and that they caused a decline of Gotham as they perceived the city as corrupt.
The 2014 television series Gotham depicts a re-imagining of Batman, featuring a twelve-year-old Bruce Wayne (portrayed by David Mazouz) whose parents are shot while exiting the Monarch Theatre screening of the 1920 version of The Mark of Zorro.
In Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Bruce Wayne's parents Thomas and Martha were murdered by Joe Chill when he was nine years old.
While seemingly hesitant, Thomas Wayne threw the first punch, attempting to beat back the mugger, but was quickly shot and mortally wounded.
When Lois Lane intervenes and explains that Superman meant his own mother, Batman relents and sets out to rescue Martha Kent.
