Shelley's title compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire.

In Shelley's Gothic story, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method based on a scientific principle he discovered.

[3] Frankenstein's monster became iconic in popular culture, and has been featured in various forms of media, including films, television series, merchandise and video games.

In the novel, Victor Frankenstein variously refers to his creation as the "creature", "fiend", "spectre", "dæmon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being", and "ogre".

For example, in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, first published in 2004, the creature is named "Deucalion", after the character from Greek mythology, who is the son of the Titan Prometheus, a reference to the original novel's title.

[12] Another example is an attempt by Randall Munroe of webcomic xkcd to make "Frankenstein" the canonical name of the monster, by publishing a short derivative version which directly states that it is.

[14] Victor Frankenstein builds the creature over a two-year period in the attic of his boarding house in Ingolstadt after discovering a scientific principle which allows him to create life from non-living matter.

The monster kills Victor's younger brother William upon learning of the boy's relation to his creator and frames Justine Moritz, a young woman who lives with the Frankensteins, as the culprit (causing her execution afterwards).

When Frankenstein retreats to the Alps, the monster approaches him at the summit, recounts his experiences, and asks his creator to build him a female mate.

He promises, in return, to disappear with his mate and never trouble humankind again, but threatens to destroy everything Frankenstein holds dear should he fail or refuse.

With nothing left to live for but revenge, Frankenstein dedicates himself to destroying his creation, and the creature goads him into pursuing him north, through Scandinavia and into Russia, staying ahead of him the entire way.

Later, the monster boards the ship, but upon finding Frankenstein dead, is overcome by grief and pledges to incinerate himself at "the Northernmost extremity of the globe".

His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.A picture of the creature appeared in the 1831 edition.

Since Karloff's portrayal, the creature almost always appears as a towering, undead-like figure, often with a flat-topped angular head and bolts on his neck to serve as electrical connectors or grotesque electrodes.

He wears a dark, usually tattered, suit having shortened coat sleeves and thick, heavy boots, causing him to walk with an awkward, stiff-legged gait (as opposed to the novel, in which he is described as much more flexible than a human).

The tone of his skin varies (although shades of green or gray are common), and his body appears stitched together at certain parts (such as around the neck and joints).

In the 1973 TV miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story, in which the creature is played by Michael Sarrazin, he appears as a strikingly handsome man who later degenerates into a grotesque monster due to a flaw in the creation process.

The electrical origin of the creature is emphasized with one electrified dome in the back of his head and another over his heart, and he also has hydraulic pistons in his legs, with the design being similar to that of a steam-punk cyborg.

The 2005 film Frankenstein Reborn portrays the creature as a paraplegic man who tries to regain the ability to walk by having a nanobots surging through his body but has side effects.

This version of the creature has the flowing dark hair described by Shelley, although he departs from her description by having pale grey skin and obvious scars along the right side of his face.

The novel portrayed him as versed in Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, books he finds after having learnt language.

He realizes from the moment of his "birth" that even his own creator cannot stand the sight of him; this is obvious when Frankenstein says "…one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped…".

While speaking to Frankenstein, he tells him, "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment...The picture I present to you is peaceful and human.

"[21] At the time the novel was written, many writers, including Percy Shelley in A Vindication of Natural Diet,[22] argued that practicing vegetarianism was the morally right thing to do.

However, his intelligence is implied to be fairly developed, since what little dialogue he speaks suggests he has a world-weary attitude to life, and a deep understanding of his unnatural state.

Another proposal is that Victor Frankenstein was based on a real scientist who had a similar name, and who had been called a modern Prometheus – Benjamin Franklin.

"[27] In her article "Frankenstein, Racial Science, and the Yellow Peril",[28] Anne Mellor claims that the monster's features share a lot in common with the Mongoloid race.

"[27] Malchow makes it clear that it is difficult to tell if this alleged racial allegory was intentional on Shelley's part or if it was inspired by the society she lived in (or if it exists in the text at all outside of his interpretation), and he states that "There is no clear proof that Mary Shelley consciously set out to create a monster which suggested, explicitly, the Jamaican escaped slave or maroon, or that she drew directly from any person knowledge of either planter or abolitionist propaganda.

Piper argues that the monster accounts for the "missing presence" of any indigenous people during Waldon's expedition, and that he represents the fear of the savage, lurking on the outskirts of civilization.