Amorphous creature

The amorphous creature is a common trope in science fiction. Usually it is depicted as a living mass of jelly, slime or liquid-like substance that can take any shape it wants. Perhaps the most familiar example is the title alien from the movie The Blob, but other examples include the vermicious knids from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, a giant pasty mass of protoplasm found in Venusian jungles in one of Stanley G. Weinbaum's few short stories, the body-dissolving alien in Damon Knight's "four into one" short story, the Rutans from Doctor Who and the Shoggoths from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Amorphous creatures are to be distinguished from shape-shifters that can change their appearance due to their body material to mimic of a living or non-living thing whatever they like, such as Batman's enemy Clayface, the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or the titular alien creature from The Thing.

Metaphorically, "amorphous" refers to any structure, body, figure, text or speech that lacks a distinct form or order.