In the 1946 film Odbody is the implied subject when, in the well-known quote, Zuzu Bailey (played by Karolyn Grimes) says "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."

On Christmas Eve, 1945, George Bailey, a banker in the town of Bedford Falls facing financial ruin and disgrace, is contemplating committing suicide by jumping off a bridge into an icy river because the payout on his $15,000 life insurance policy would solve the problems confronting his business and family.

As Clarence dries off, he reveals he is an angel (causing the tollkeeper to flee in fear), but George is still unconvinced and believes that if killing himself is such a bad idea, maybe everybody would be better off if he had never been born in the first place.

His Uncle Billy, formerly in charge of the Bailey Building and Loan, lost his business when he accidentally gave the day's receipts to Potter in a folded-up newspaper, had a nervous breakdown, and spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum.

He sees that his old boss Emil Gower, the town druggist, had accidentally poisoned the child's prescription and is now a derelict hobo, shunned by everyone after having served twenty years in prison for manslaughter.

George finds that the town has been renamed "Pottersville" in honor of the wealthy but heartless Henry F. Potter, who appears to have taken over Bedford Falls and turned it into a sleazy and dangerous place filled with whiskey bars, crime, pawnshops, violence, seedy entertainment establishments, and unhappy people with meaningless, amoral lives.

[3] The Last Temptation of Clarence Odbody is a 2011 novel written by John Pierson which imagines the future lives of various It's a Wonderful Life characters if George had not survived his jump into the river.