Virt-controller crashes with "panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference" in OpenShift Virtualization

Issue

The virt-controller pods fail to start and enter a CrashLoopBackOff state. The logs for the virt-controller show a panic stack trace indicating an invalid memory address.

panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [recovered]
...
kubevirt.io/kubevirt/pkg/virt-controller/watch/vm.patchVMRevision(...)
    /remote-source/app/pkg/virt-controller/watch/vm/vm.go:1644
kubevirt.io/kubevirt/pkg/virt-controller/watch/vm.(*Controller).createVMRevision(...)
    /remote-source/app/pkg/virt-controller/watch/vm/vm.go:1811
...