1E
The debt to Frankenstein's Monster is particularly clear in the 1E illustration, which gives the golem the high, almost cylindrical head seen in the 1930s film version. Otherwise, the golem is an animated humanoid apparently stitched together from pieces of human body; it is hairless with a lantern jaw and distinct brow ridges. It is stated to be 7½ feet (230cm) tall which, given that this is obviously taller than the vast majority of humans, implies that either the magical process which creates it enlarges the original body parts or that multiple pieces are grafted together to make the body.
For example, one could cut through part of the original legs and attach a bit of thigh bone and muscle from a different corpse into the gap, thus making the legs longer. Since the overall shape ends up with roughly human proportions, the backbone, ribs, and arms would all have to be treated in the same manner, and there's almost certainly some magic involved in turning this into a (comparatively) harmonious whole but it's not intended to be a simple process or one that's entirely physical.
In terms of its general properties, the flesh golem has an extremely low intelligence for something that appears humanoid - it's actually less so than a gorilla and about the same as a wolf or lion. So probably not a great conversationalist, then. It moves slowly, presumably lurching along, Boris Karloff-style, and is immensely strong, although this edition doesn't allow us to gauge it relative to, say, giants or ogres. It is entirely unarmoured, one of the few creatures to have a rating the same as a naked human - although there's no obvious reason why you couldn't make armour to put it in.
Having said which, there's not much need, since nothing short of magical weapons can injure it anyway. Whether regular weapons bounce off the flesh or wounds instantly heal or exactly how (or why) this works is, however, not described. A clear connection with the Universal Pictures version is the fact that it gains energy from electricity, a nod to the scene in which the monster is animated by lightning in the original film - something that doesn't happen in the book, where the process of its creation is deliberately ambiguous.The 2E version has a more ape-like build, with disproportionately long limbs and large hands and feet. It retains more hair than the 1E version, has a more normally-shaped head, and doesn't visibly appear to be especially muscular. The skin is said to be sickly yellowish (as the monster was in Shelley's book), although this is not obviously so in the illustration. Otherwise, the description conforms to the 1E version, confirming that flesh golems are created from body parts of multiple corpses and that they are as strength as a hill giant despite being quite a lot smaller. Apparently, they cannot be ordered to use weapons, and we're specifically told that, as the pictures show, they rarely wear anything more than a pair of trousers.
Presumably, nobody makes them from female bodies, then?
3E
3E shows a creature that's more obviously patchwork and that appears somewhat emaciated. In addition to the stitching, it seems have a number of nails hammered into its arms as well as electrical cabling and metal struts around the head and torso. Together with the fact that part of one arm has been replaced by a metal support, this seems to imply something that's rather more mechanical than previous versions, even if the bulk of it is made from flesh. We're told that at least six different bodies are required to construct it and that it's now 8 feet (245 cm) tall, roughly the same height as given in the original novel.
In some other respects, the flesh golem is less powerful than before, no longer being entirely resistant to regular weapons. It's still very difficult to injure, however, and has an armour rating equivalent to plate steel. This perhaps reflects the lack of blood and indicates a tough leathery flesh lacking any vital organs beneath it to slash or penetrate. The fact that the creature has no free will, and simply does whatever it is ordered to means that, like zombies, it has no intelligence rating. Although the strength rating has increased in absolute terms, this is likely a reflection of the rules changes between editions (there's no clear maximum strength any more, as there used to be). In fact, the flesh golem now has the strength of an ogre, a creature roughly its own size, rather than that of the larger and stronger hill giant.
5E
The 5E flesh golem is essentially a more muscular version of the 2E one - and doubtless, the exact appearance depends on the bodies used, so this probably doesn't mean much. Its armour rating has dropped back to its original level which, given changes in the rules since 1E, actually makes it less armoured than the average nude human. However, it retains its immunity to regular physical damage, and the description this time does make it sound as if weapons simply bounce off due to enchantments placed on its skin.
While it remains resistant to magic, it's much less so than before, and can be hurt by such things as radiant and necrotic damage, or being sprayed with magical acid. Significantly, while it was previously essentially invulnerable to fire, it can not only be hurt by it now but is frightened of it - another reference to the film version of Frankenstein's monster. This version is also the most intelligent yet, equivalent to a gorilla, and therefore higher than not only than a wolf, but also than an ogre. The strength remains the same as in 3E, at least in relative terms, and so on a par with an ogre, not a true giant.
Superficially, the flesh golem seems as if it ought to be undead. Unlike other constructs, it consists largely or entirely of animated dead flesh and resembles a super-powered zombie more than it does, say, an animated statue. Nonetheless, it is not considered undead and one might wonder why not.The first point to bear in mind is that there isn't actually much difference between a construct and an undead in practical terms, especially if they are both mindless. The lists of properties that undead and constructs have in 3E are virtually identical which, if they're made of the same material, as is the case here, makes them difficult to tell apart. In 5E, where there are no mandated lists of this type, it's harder, since one is left largely with the distinction that spells and effects that should work only on undead don't work on flesh golems, and vice versa for zombies and constructs. Which is a rather circular distinction.
The key difference, therefore, is unlikely to be something one could tell from casual observation. Undead, including zombies and skeletons are, to some extent, animated by "negative energy" or necrotic energy, or whatever it might be, whereas flesh golems are (at least in 5E) animated by the spirits of earth elementals. The different type of energy must be what detect undead spells and the like are sensing, rather than the more obvious "animated corpse flesh". (And, of course, some undead, such as ghosts, don't have flesh). Furthermore, a resurrection spell cast on an undead can restore the original living being, whereas it's difficult to see how this could possibly work on a flesh golem, given that it was never one individual living being to start with, being built from more than one body.
Speaking of which, what body parts do we need to construct a flesh golem? The case that we need more than body to do so may well be that the resulting golem is larger than any regular human being, although, as noted above, this means that we're doing something more complicated than taking one limb from each of four different bodies and attaching them to a single torso and head. Nor does it explain why the brain has to come from a different body to the head, or, indeed, from any other part of the golem.
Other than that's how it works in the Frankenstein movies, obviously.
In terms of the internal organs, however, it's not immediately obvious why you'd need very many of them at all, beyond the skeleton and musculature needed for the thing to have physical integrity and move about. It doesn't eat, so it doesn't really need a digestive system, and it doesn't breathe or speak, so it doesn't need lungs or a larynx. And so on.
Instead, the assumption must be that the body has to have the approximate physical form of a human in order for the animating spirit to occupy it and that this applies both inside and out. The kidneys, for example, may not actually do anything, but they need to be there just to imitate the form. That's probably true of the brain as well, although the eyes and ears are an obvious necessity regardless and must function more or less as they do in a living being.
Most of the golem's ability to resist injury is likely to due to enchantments placed on it, and presumably ones that wouldn't work well if placed on a being that's still alive. This is less apparent in 5E than earlier editions, since the golem in this edition can be burned, frozen, blasted with necrotic energy and so on, which the earlier ones couldn't. And the fact that it can't be fatigued, poisoned, paralysed, and so forth is due to the fact that it isn't really alive.
Perhaps its most notable trait, though, is the fact that electrocuting it has a healing effect, not a harmful one. That is, it absorbs electrical energy and somehow uses it to bind its physical flesh back together again. This has to be a magical effect and likely implies that the flesh golem is created in a manner similar to the monster in the Frankenstein movies, thunderstorms and all. This echoes the ideas of galvanism, whereby attaching electrodes to recently dead body parts can get them to twitch, because of the nerves still being relatively intact. It's harder to see why it should work for a flesh golem, which surely has no functioning nerves or it could be paralysed, or even subject to certain poisons.
Obviously, the answer is "it's magic", but one could still question why an animating earth spirit should be so linked to lightning when that's not normally something associated with that element.
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