In the movie, the family moves to Westfield, New Jersey, where their creator Charles Addams grew up.
Gomez mentions a relative named Zander who was the black sheep of the family for failing the Mazurka. In Charles Addams' comics, Zander was a college graduate (which still made him the black sheep).
The character designs of the family are directly inspired from the Charles Addams comics, which portrayed them as more macabre and ghoulish for the sake of black comedy. Notably, Wednesday looks solemn, Pugsley is energetic, and Lurch has only one working eye.
In the opening wedding scene Morticia is shown emerging from what is apparently her home in a sewer. The first Charles Addams cartoon to show Morticia showed her telling her date "Well here's where I say good night," standing before an open sewer with a ladder leading down it.
Thing is a left hand in this version. Unlike previous incarnations when he was usually right. Although in the original The Addams Family (1964), he would sometimes change back and forth, as a joke.