Personality
Gomez is of Castilian extraction, and almost always dresses in a chalk-striped, dark-colored suit, sports slicked-back hair and a pencil moustache. In the television shows, Gomez wore a necktie to his chalk-stripe suit, though in the films, Gomez wears a bow-tie and seems to enjoy dressing in a wide variety of extravagant clothing. He enjoys smoking cigars, and is an accomplished juggler and knife-thrower. He is well-versed in all types of combat (or believes himself to be, at any rate), especially swordfighting. His favorite dance is The Freddie. Though head of the household, he is extremely naïve and childish, with a short attention span and endless optimism. He has a childlike love for toys and is especially fond of setting up head-on collisions between his model trains. As indicative of his playfully eccentric personality, his personal portrait, painted by Morticia, depicts him standing on his head. Gomez is passionately in love with Morticia; he affectionately calls her romantic names like Querida ("darling") and Cara Mia ("my beloved"), and is driven insane with desire by the slightest of her actions, whether imitating animal noises, speaking French or calling him "Bubele" (Austro-Bavarian/Yiddish: Lit. "little boy"). In The New Addams Family, Gomez also has reactions to Spanish. He also doesn't care who speaks the French, as long as Morticia is there so he can kiss her arm. Like the rest of the family, Gomez is open and friendly to outsiders, though he finds their "normal" lifestyles bizarre.
Charles Addams' description went like this:
| “ | Husband to Morticia (if indeed they are married at all) ... a crafty schemer, but also a jolly man in his own way ... though sometimes misguided ... sentimental and often puckish — optimistic, he is in full enthusiasm for his dreadful plots ... is sometimes seen in a rather formal dressing gown ... the only one who smokes. | ” |
| — Charles Addams |
Gomez Addams is an athletic, acrobatic, and eccentric multi-billionaire. Though an extremely successful businessman, having acquired much of his wealth through investments, he seems to have little regard for money and will casually spend thousands of dollars on any whimsical endeavor (a fact that often mortifies visitors of the Addams household). Gomez's investments are guided more by whimsy than strategy, yet luck rarely fails him. "It's not for nothing that they call me "The Plunger"," he once boasted, an apparent reference to sticking doggedly with a stock despite low fluctuations, although this nickname was in fact bestowed upon him not by Wall Street investors but by the Plumbers' Union. According to The New Addams Family, he has 20-20 vision, and the heart of a 20-year-old track star — Mama had performed the surgery herself.
In the original sitcom, Gomez owned businesses around the world, including a crocodile farm ("Crocodiles Unlimited"), a buzzard farm, a salt mine, a tombstone factory, a uranium mine, and many others. It was not unheard of for him to simply forget that he owned a controlling interest in a business or to draw a check on the wrong bank. Guinness World Records 2008 ranked him as 5th richest TV character with a net worth of $8.2 million. Forbes lists him as worth much higher; in their 2007 "Fictional 15" list of the richest fictional characters, he was ranked #12 with a net worth of $2 billion, but has been omitted from recent lists.
As a young man, Gomez was, per flashback in "Morticia's Romance," a perennially sickly youth, gaining perfect health only after meeting Morticia. He nevertheless studied law (voted "Most Likely Never to Pass the Bar"), and although he rarely practices, he takes an absurd delight in losing cases, boasting of having put many criminals behind bars while acting as their defense attorney; this is somewhat contradicted in the episode "The Addams Family Goes to Court," where it is noted that while Gomez has never won a case, he has never lost one either ("Perfect record!" boasts Grandmama). In The New Addams Family, Gomez had also studied medicine.
Gomez has offered contradictory views on work; in one episode, he claims that, although his family was wealthy even in his childhood, he nonetheless performed odd jobs and "scrimped and saved kopeks," which he considered character building. When his son Pugsley decided to find a job, however, Gomez was horrified, claiming that "No Addams has worked in 200 years!" Possibly Gomez, who dotes on his children, feels that behavior that was good enough for him is not good enough for Pugsley. In the 1991 animated series, Gomez deliberately tried to fail at something, anything, only to realize in the end of the episode that he is only a failure in failure. This is additionally contradicted in "New Neighbors Meet the Addams Family" Season 1 : Ep. 9(1960). He specifically states that Thing always beats him at bridge.
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