"[4] John Astin had long sessions with Addams and series producer David Levy, who gave him free rein in developing the character.

Enlarging on Addams's description of Gomez as a Latin lover type, Astin suggested the eye-rolling, pencil moustache, and ardent devotion to Morticia.

[6] Though an extremely successful businessman, having acquired much of his wealth through inheritance and investments, he has little regard for money and will casually spend thousands of dollars on any whimsical endeavor.

He nevertheless studied law (voted "Most Likely Never to Pass the Bar") and is quite proud his law class voted him "Least Likely to Succeed"; 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, claiming that he "never sent an innocent man to jail;" this is somewhat contradicted in the episode "The Addams Family Goes to Court," which noted that while Gomez has never won a case, he has never lost one either.

This backstory, while not mentioned directly, is recalled in The Addams Family (1991), when Gomez announces he will serve as his own attorney, only to lose the case.

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 [his] kopeks," which he considered character building.

After Julia died in 1994, Tim Curry took up the role in the television film Addams Family Reunion in 1998, and in 1999, Gomez was played by Glenn Taranto in the TV series The New Addams Family, where he returned to the madcap attitude of his original 1960s incarnation with Astin guest-starring as Gomez's grandfather.

In the UK tour of The Addams Family musical in 2017, Gomez was portrayed by Cameron Blakely, who was set to reprise his role in 2021.

In Addams Family Values, Gomez and Morticia have a third child named Pubert, a seemingly indestructible baby with a thin, black moustache like his father.

In the latter film, it is revealed that Gomez wears a wig made of Sasquatch fur due to losing his original hair in a napalm accident.