antagonists

“ See that, kid? That's what happens when you try to be a hero. „
~ Joe Chill taunting Bruce Wayne after murdering his parents

Joseph Chillton (aka Joe Chill) is a minor yet pivotal antagonist in Batman comics: he is the small-time criminal who murders Bruce Wayne's parents, and is thus indirectly responsible for Batman's existence.

Chill has been depicted in many different ways across the various continuities of Batman comics.

Original characterization

Pre-Crisis

In the Golden and Silver Ages, he is depicted as a hitman who killed the Waynes to prevent Thomas from testifying against mob boss Lew Moxon. He later becomes a crime boss in his own right, and Batman finds out who he is during an unrelated case, and confronts him, revealing his secret identity. Terrified, Chill runs to his men for protection, but they turn on him and shoot him dead after finding out that he created Batman.

Post-Crisis

In the Post-Crisis continuity, however, Chill is simply a mugger who was never brought to justice for killing the Waynes; it is implied that Batman sees all the criminals he fights as surrogates for Chill.

New 52

In the New 52 continuity, Bruce Wayne tracks Chill down 10 years after the murder of his parents, believing that Chill was paid to kill the Waynes by his family's enemies. When Bruce finally finds Chill, however, he learns that his parents' murderer is simply a ne'er-do-well alcoholic who wanted money to feed his addiction, and did not even know who the Waynes were until the next day. Disillusioned and enraged, Bruce puts a gun to Chill's head, but stops himself from pulling the trigger upon realizing that his father would not want him to become a murderer. The next day, he leaves Gotham to begin training to become Batman.

Batman Begins

JoeChillBatmanBegins

Chill appears in the live-action film Batman Begins as the quaternary, yet crucial, antagonist. Like in the majority of Batman continuity, Chill is a small time criminal who, out of desperation because of extreme poverty (At the time, Gotham City was in the middle of an economic depression that was caused by the League of Shadows) mugs the Waynes outside of an opera house and subsequently kills both Thomas and Martha Wayne. He is immediately apprehended by the GCPD and is sent to jail, where he shares a cell with mob boss Carmine Falcone.

Fourteen years later, after Falcone has escaped from prison, Chill cuts a deal with the GCPD, arranging for his release on parole in exchange for testifying against Falcone in court. Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham to attend Chill's disciplinary hearing (which the presiding judge, paid off by Falcone, makes public in order to get Chill "in the open") to apparently speak on behalf of his parents. During the hearing, Chill claims to regret his crime, though it is unspecified whether he really is or not. Following the hearing, Bruce attempts to get revenge against Chill with the plan to murder him while he left the courthouse; he is robbed of his chance when an assassin working for Falcone guns Chill down first. After Bruce's revelation to his close friend Rachel Dawes that he wanted to kill Chill, Dawes slaps him and says that his father would have been ashamed of him. Upon realizing this, Bruce hurls the gun into the Gotham Bay and vows never to touch one ever again. During Bruce's confrontation with Carmine Falcone, Falcone claims that when he and Chill were in jail together that Chill bragged that when he murdered the Waynes, that Bruce's father "begged like a dog" for mercy. Once again, it is not verified if this is factual or not (though Thomas Wayne did not beg for mercy in the film. If Chill really did regret killing the Waynes, it is likely that Falcone was making that up.)

Like in most Batman continuity, Chill's murdering of Thomas and Martha Wayne leads to Bruce's desire to fight injustice, which once again makes Chill inadvertantly responsible for Bruce becoming Batman.

Animated Versions