Even though Frieza is one of the most ruthless tyrants in the entire Dragon Ball universe, he suffered one infamous failure that will haunt him until his dying breath, however, Dragon Ball Super gave Frieza the chance to redeem that failure—and he took full advantage of that opportunity.

Frieza made his debut in Dragon Ball Chapter 247 by Akira Toriyama. During the storyline in which this issue is set, Frieza and his army are after the seven Dragon Balls of Planet Namek as Frieza wants to wish upon them and make himself immortal. However, the Z Fighters follow Frieza to Namek and work to thwart him at every turn. Finally, Frieza decides to clear out his enemies himself and take the Dragon Balls by force rather than relying on his army to gather them for him. At that point, Goku shows up and challenges Frieza one-on-one in a battle that would become one of the most iconic in history. One aspect of that battle that was arguably more iconic than the fight itself was Frieza’s ploy to defeat Goku. When it became clear that Goku would not go down easy, Frieza fired a blast into the core of the planet, and told Goku that they had five minutes before Namek would explode which would have resulted in Goku’s death and Frieza’s survival. However, within that five minute window, Frieza was defeated and was left to die floating through space amid the rubble that was once Planet Namek.

In Dragon Ball Super Chapters 34-35 by Akira Toriyama and Toyotarou, Frieza joined forces with Goku and the other Z Fighters in the Tournament of Power to fight for the continued existence of their entire universe. While battling in the multiversal contest, Frieza meets a variant of himself, a nearly identical creature named Frost. Frieza befriends Frost and tells him that they should work together to take out the Saiyans as he doesn’t actually care about the universe so long as he can have his revenge on Goku. However, after convincing Frost to take out a number of fighters from other universes on his behalf (promising to tag-in a little later in the game) Frieza betrayed Frost and threw him out of the ring when he least expected it–successfully defeating a powerful foe through trickery.

The events of Frieza befriending and then betraying Frost happened over the course of exactly five minutes, the same amount of time it took him to lose to Goku on Planet Namek. This is an incredibly significant parallel for Frieza as it shows what he can accomplish within that short amount of time despite him having been so thoroughly beaten by Goku within that same time window. During his first fight on Namek, Frieza tried to get into Goku’s mind by telling him that he only had five minutes to defeat him or else he would assuredly die once the planet exploded. While that trickery backfired and only inspired Goku to fight even harder and faster than he ever had before, Frieza’s scheme worked perfectly on Frost and showed how truly effective Frieza can be in just five minutes.

While the way Frieza went about tricking his opponents were complete opposites as he gained Frost’s trust rather than trying to intimidate him as he did with Goku, the scheme was the same for both: trick them into giving Frieza the upper hand, and do so within five minutes. Even though Frieza wasn’t explicitly trying to eliminate Frost in five minutes exactly since that time frame wasn’t nearly as important as the one he set with Goku, it seems the cosmic scales of the universe tipped in his favor this time around as Dragon Ball Super let Frieza redeem his most infamous failure.