The 1E Monster Manual includes a number of creatures that could loosely be described as oozes but only four of these have consistently appeared in the core rulebooks (excluding 4E, as I usually do, which retains just two of them in the MM1). Three of these are entirely amorphous, although the one that's perhaps the most notorious does at least have a shape.
Formless Goo
The three consistently appearing monsters that fit this description are described quite differently in 1E and are not grouped together in the original Monster Manual as they will be in later editions. The black pudding, curiously named for a type of British sausage, is the most powerful. It's described as multicellular and covered with numerous tiny "mouths" that secrete acidic saliva. This implies a degree of internal structure, and the illustration does show it to not be entirely formless, having a lobed body with short, regularly spaced pseudopodia around the base. The "mouths" are not visible, so they're presumably too small to see, perhaps tiny openings each of which leads into a small secretory digestive cavity. The creature digests its food externally by smearing digestive juices onto it and sucking up the resulting slurry - something that's not that different from a house fly, as well as some much simpler organisms.
In contrast, the grey ooze, which is the weakest of the three, seems to be much more amorphous. It's shown as a thin sheet of slime and, while we're told it's similar to the pudding in some respects, there's no mention of the mouths, nor any reason to suppose there would be any. Finally, we have the ochre jelly, which is specifically not multicellular and is, instead, a single giant amoeboid cell. There's a central hump in the middle, which may contain a nucleus, although the thing isn't translucent enough for this to be obvious.There is a reason that we do not encounter such large, mobile amorphous blobs in the real world and that's the need for oxygen to diffuse through the body in order to keep it alive. Most active creatures of any size need a circulatory system of some kind; even creatures the size of fleas have a heart that can keep blood flowing through the body cavity. One way to avoid this is to be extremely thin, as is the case with, say, flatworms. This way, the oxygen doesn't have to travel very far to reach the centre of the animal, although it still needs a permeable body surface if it's to avoid the need for lungs or gills.
The grey ooze has the advantage here, since it is sufficiently thin to be mistaken as a sheen on the surface of rock, and it also moves extremely slowly - the slowest rating that the system will allow in 1E. For puddings and jellies, the lack of any internal circulatory or respiratory system would be crippling. While there are bacteria, and even a few multicellular organisms in the real world that can survive without any access to oxygen (indeed, it's often poisonous to them) they're all microscopically small and not very active - oxygen really is needed if the creature is going to do anything very much. We're thus left with the conclusion that jellies and puddings, at a minimum, are fuelled by magical energy, not regular biochemistry.
Assuming we ignore this, however, the formless nature of the creatures means that such things as digestive and excretory systems probably aren't necessary, since they can just form whatever internal structures they need at will, and leave their excreta behind as a trail on the floor.2E still distinguishes the puddings from other oozes, although the description and illustration both show something that's more amorphous and ooze-like than the creature shown in 1E and the nature of the distinction isn't very clear. By 3E, they are all grouped together. By this edition, they have become much harder to hit, perhaps reflecting their lack of internal organs (they're immune to critical hits, too, presumably for the same reason) and move more quickly than before. We're specifically told that they breathe, so oxygen must be required, even if it's somehow magically transferred to their internal matter. Notably, the ochre jelly is much thinner in this edition than it looked in 1E, lacking the hump where the nucleus seemed to be... although still not thin enough that regular gas diffusion would be sufficient to keep it alive.
It's also clear that oozes lack any nervous system. In 3E they are described as entirely unintelligent, but this is not quite true in the other editions. In 1E, the grey ooze has an animal level of intelligence, while in 5E, that honour goes instead to the ochre jelly - which makes it more intelligent than a shark in that edition. 1E also states that some grey oozes have "well-developed intelligence", although what that means beyond them possessing psychic powers isn't explained; this is dropped in later editions.
It is, of course, hard to see how something without a nervous system could be more intelligent than a shark, or even a spider. But we also have the same problem with those that are supposed to have zero intelligence. (I'm ignoring the stat of 1 in 5E, since that edition doesn't really allow for zero-level attributes, so 1 is as low as it goes). Even jellyfish have a nervous system, albeit without a brain, and they need one to coordinate their bodily motions and swim through the water. And it's apparent that black puddings and the like can coordinate their physical movements despite the different parts of their body not being in close proximity - unlike a real amoeba, they aren't microscopic.
In a similar vein, we can talk about the creatures' senses. 3E indicates that oozes typically sense heat, while 5E indicates that it's more a matter of sensing movement and vibrations in the ground. A slow-moving mass of material could be drawn towards heat without requiring much of a nervous system, so long as the individual cells move in that direction. It's a little harder to see how vibration sense would work, although something could at least recoil (or surge forward and engulf) when it is touched. On the bright side, it certainly does make sense that oozes would not sleep, and would be immune to spells that require a nervous system or brain to have any effect - although, logically, this probably ought to include paralysis, which it doesn't seem to.
Nonetheless, the implication in most editions is that oozes are composed of living matter, albeit stuff that secretes acid onto their surroundings. However, their immunities to damage don't always reflect this. Many are difficult or impossible to hurt simply by hitting them with blunt objects or attempting to cut or pierce them. (Although in 5E, they can be hurt by piercing... why this would be is unclear). When they have no internal organs or blood supply are not particularly solid, this much is unsurprising.However, both grey oozes and black puddings are also resistant to intense cold, which we wouldn't expect an organic creature to be. The grey ooze cannot be burned either, although, unlike the other two, it can be affected by lightning. Indeed, lightning splits the other two types into smaller chunks, implying that the individual cells retreat from the electrical strike and reform elsewhere. Presumably, this is a defence mechanism rather than a usual means of reproduction, although the end result is the same. Most oozes are resistant to acid in 5E, having some sort of membranous or mucinous coating to stop them digesting themselves - this isn't mentioned in the earlier editions, although it's a logical extrapolation and likely omitted only due to differences in the way stats are written up in those books.
The grey ooze is fully affected by lightning, but, unlike the others, is immune to fire. A partial explanation for this provided in 5E, where grey oozes are said to be "liquid stone" rather than organic matter. One would think that would make them earth elementals, but perhaps the fluidity means that they're different enough not to fit in that category. In any event, being composed of non-combustible minerals could well explain the fire immunity, as well as that to acid. Quite what room temperature liquid stone would be chemically speaking is less clear. One could imagine a slurry of mineral particles in a fluid matrix, which might explain the vulnerability to lightning - it fuses the particles into a sinter, preventing them from animating the ooze. But then, one would think that cold would freeze the fluid element and have much the same effect, which it doesn't. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that magic is affecting the composition of the stone at a molecular level doing something that temperature cannot interfere with, but that electricity can.
Most editions either state, or at least imply, that oozes reproduce by binary fission, in the way that an amoeba does. An alternative would be that they release microscopic spores that sprout and slowly grow into the full-sized version, but this doesn't seem to be the case, especially since (at least in the core rulebooks) tiny oozes don't seem to be a thing. 2E states that the grey ooze splits part of itself off into egg-like structures that it deposits as it moves, but there is no indication of this in later editions. Certainly, oozes seem to be asexual - which is less obvious than it might appear, since many real-world protozoans, moulds, etc. are not.
Gelatinous Cube
And, finally, another one of those weird creatures that seems to exist solely because dungeons do. It is composed of a material that is almost entirely transparent, probably with a refractive index similar to that of water. Significantly, unlike other oozes, we're told that it cannot change its shape except to lash out with a pseudopod, meaning that it cannot squeeze into a space smaller than its regular dimensions. There's probably some leeway, given that they are gelatinous, but the descriptions imply that there isn't much.
While these are stated to be variable, and aren't mentioned directly in 5E at all, the standard form is a cube that's ten feet (3.3 metres) on a side. This ought to make it incredibly heavy, but the only figure for weight that we're given is in 3E, where a standard-sized cube weighs only 15,000 lbs (8.8 metric tons). This gives the cube a density of 0.24, which is the same as cork - a gelatinous cube would bob about helplessly on the surface of a large body of water if you somehow threw it in.
The stated size, of course, is intended to suit the remarkably monomorphic architectural designs of underground structures in the game. Ten feet seems pretty wide for an underground tunnel, although not implausibly so, but its uncommon to encounter one narrower than that in D&D, giving the cubes free reign until they run into a door in a stone wall. Logically, the ceilings of such tunnels should be arched for structural support, which means that the vaulting must also start at least ten feet up, and that the cube cannot (usually) scavenge from the ceiling, leaving a gap above itself as it moves.
Given this perfect suitability for standardised artificial structures, it is hard to see how the cube could be a natural creation. Certainly, it could move though sufficiently large cave complexes, scraping food off the floor, and such things are more common in the D&D world than they typically are in reality (potholers do not regularly find themselves strolling though ten-foot wide passages) but a dome shape would make much more sense for doing that, and be more stable to boot. The cubic form, with digestive surfaces on the sides as well as the base, is surely adapted solely to passages with constructed, square-shaped, cross-sections. While the edges presumably aren't all that sharp, it's still an odd form to have for something that isn't supposed to be solid, making it look as if it was cast in a mould.
Biologically, the gelatinous cube is much the same as other oozes, although its cubic shape is about as far from the ideal shape of such a thing as its possible to get - for oxygen diffusion into the centre, a sphere is the worst option, but a cube certainly isn't great. The great bulk of the cube also implies that it would require a lot of food to keep itself going, even with its apparently slow metabolism - one would imagine that it would have to eat quite a lot of other dungeon denizens to keep itself alive for any length of time.
Initially, cubes are resistant to electricity and extreme cold, as the black pudding is, although the precise details are different, and they don't split in half when hit. In later editions, while its great mass and lack of vital organs makes it difficult to hurt, it seems to be composed of regular organic matter with no resistances to attacks other than those that rely on it having a nervous system.
In the first two editions, the cube is covered with a paralytic slime that allows it to incapacitate anything that touches it and then roll over it before digesting it with its internal acids. Later on, while the paralytic secretions never go away, it also seems to be covered in acid, able to digest organic matter externally as well as internally.
2E states that when cubes have sufficient metabolic reserves, they extrude a smaller cube and leave it detached to slowly grow to the adult size. This isn't quite the binary fission of an amoeba, but it makes sense for something that's likely a colony of individual cells lacking any internal organisation. Of course, how the heck they get from one dungeon complex to another to spread their species is another question...
Like other oozes, the cube is asexual.
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