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troperville

Chun-Li: My father saved his village at the cost of his own life. You had him shot as you ran away! A hero at a thousand paces.
M. Bison: I'm sorry. I don't remember any of it.
Chun-Li: You don't remember?!
M. Bison: For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday.

— Street Fighter

This trope is what happens when the critical event that started the hero on his journey was an atrocity by the Big Bad that he has long since forgotten (possibly due to it being just one of many) and most likely never given a second thought.

This is often used to show that what the villains and Big Bads do is so routine that it is easy to forget even the most heinous crimes. It comes off as rather insulting that a tragedy that altered the protagonist's life permanently is given the same regard as taking out the laundry or brushing your teeth, you do these routines so often that they become unremarkable after a certain point. This causes the audience (and the Hero) to hate him even more and give the Hero further reason to give him a Karmic Death.

This trope goes hand in hand with the Unknown Rival; a villain who doesn't know or care about his heroic rival probably won't care much about what made said person annoyed at him to begin with. This is another example of how A Million is a Statistic.

A common variant, when the villain's specific crime is described to them, is to have them ask for the hero to be more specific, since they commit it so often; this is frequently played for laughs by having the villain continue to ask them to be more specific even when the description is outrageously detailed.

Often a villain trope, but sometimes this happens from the other perspective when a minor villain tries to get their revenge against a hero, who spends so much time stopping people like them they left no impression. In this case, the comment is usually humoristic.