Gomer Pyle is a fictional character played by Jim Nabors and introduced in the middle of the third season of The Andy Griffith Show.

[1]: 20 Gomer is a naïve, extremely moral auto mechanic turned United States Marine Corps private, from Mayberry, North Carolina.

The only apparent employee at Wally's Filling Station, he initially lived there in a back room, and according to Andy, was "saving up for college" and wanted to be a doctor.

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, he usually wore a service-station uniform and a baseball cap with an upturned bill; a handkerchief dangled from his back pocket.

He initially displayed scant knowledge of automotive mechanics; in "The Great Filling Station Robbery", for example, he thought a carburetor was a hood ornament.

Like his cousin Goober, Gomer provided comic relief, awestruck by the simplest of things, resulting in the exclamation of his catchphrases, "Shazam!

In the last episode of the fourth season, Gomer tells Andy he has joined the Marines, because he realized he would eventually be drafted into military service.

Gomer's Mayberry roots were evident in the spin-off series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., where his countrified, backward nature served as the mainstay for the show's humor, making him a comic foil to the hard-nosed drill instructor (later platoon sergeant) Gunnery Sergeant Vince Carter, played by Frank Sutton.

Carter, in the 1967 episode "The Show Must Go On", in which Gomer, backed by the Marine Corps Band, performs for an audience that includes the President.

As a Marine, Gomer's romantic interest is Lou Ann Poovie, a fellow North Carolinian who came to California for a singing career, although she proves to be tone deaf.

Jim Nabors briefly parodied his role in Cannonball Run II, playing a character named Homer Lyle[4].