History Characters / ItsAWonderfulLife

* CorruptedCharacterCopy: He heavily resembles [[Literature/AChristmasCarol Ebenezer Scrooge]], being the grouchy, uncaring town rich man who's loathed by the populace and whose death is likely to go unmourned, and who is heavily associated with Christmas. But Dickens demonstrates that Scrooge isn't entirely a hopeless cause; he's had a hard life and when he receives a chance to reform, he grabs hold of it wholeheartedly. ''It's a Wonderful Life'' never indicates that Potter had any tragic backstory to explain why he's so cruel to people and he never changes. Furthermore, in a deleted scene, Clarence gives him a biting speech that's essentially a compressed version of Christmas Future's time with Scrooge, he drops dead of a heart attack rather than throwing himself on the messenger's mercy and begging for a second chance as Scrooge does.

* ControlFreak: Potter doesn't just want every penny people in Bedford Falls have. He wants to utterly dominate the town and have every aspect of it serve him. This is why he's so obsessed with getting the Building & Loan as, even with all his wealth and influence, he simply can't stand the fact that there is some part of the town that he doesn't have power over.

* EvilOldFolks: One of the best examples in all of fiction. [[note]]He has a well-earned rank of #6 (out of 50) on AFI'S "Villains" list.[[/note]] He's already an old man when George is a child, meaning he must be pushing ninety by the end of the film.

* SecretKeeper: He's the only one aside from Mr. Gower who knows that the man nearly accidentally poisoned a child after learning about his son's death. He promised to keep it a secret and stuck to it.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/george_bailey.png]]

!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/WardBond

->'''Played by:''' Bobby Anderson (child), Creator/JimmyStewart (adult)

->'''Played by:''' Jean Gale (child), Creator/DonnaReed (adult)

->'''Played by:''' Larry Simms (Pete), Carol Coomes (Janie), Jimmy Hawkins (Tommy), and Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu)

->'''Played by:''' Georgie Nokes (child), Todd Karns (adult)

->'''Played by:''' Samuel S. Hinds

->'''Played by:''' Beulah Bondi

->'''Played by:''' Creator/ThomasMitchell

->'''Played by:''' Mary Treen (Tilly) and Charles Williams (Eustace)

->'''Played by:''' Creator/LionelBarrymore

->'''Played by:''' Frank Faylen

->'''Played by:''' Ward Bond

->'''Played by:''' Jeanine Ann Roose (child), Creator/GloriaGrahame (adult)

->'''Played by:''' Ronnie Ralph (child), Frank Albertson (adult)

->'''Played by:''' Danny Mummert (child), Harold Landon (older)

->'''Played by:''' Virginia Patton

->'''Played by:''' [[Film/TheLittleRascals Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer]]

->'''Played by:''' Lillian Randolph

->'''Played by:''' H.B. Warner

->'''Played by:''' William Edmunds

->'''Played by:''' Sheldon Leonard

->'''Played by:''' Frank Hagney

->'''Played by:''' Henry Travers

->'''Played by:''' Moroni Olsen (Franklin) and Joseph Granby (Joseph)

->'''Played by:''' Charles Halton

* TheMourningAfter: Briefly touched on when he tearfully tells George that he's gone through his entire house in search of the missing money, "even in rooms that have been locked since I lost Laura".

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: While technically an antagonist, he's just doing his job as a bank examiner. Outside of work, he is apparently a good family man. His biggest complaint isn't about the building & loan itself, but that he's annoyed he has to do the audit right before Christmas and he just wants to get it over with quickly so he can go home for the holiday.

* AcePilot: Honored by the President for shooting down kamikaze plans before they could crash into transports of US troops.

* BrokenBird: In the Pottersville storyline, she is understandably quite bitter over losing her only child, her husband, and her brother-in-law after he lost the family business to Mr. Potter and landed in an insane asylum, and she has to run a shabby boarding house to support herself.