Dragon Ball Z's Frieza saga, released in 1990, introduced several new characters with unique abilities, such as the Ginyu Force, leading to some memorable battles. But the best fight of the series was between planet-conquering Frieza and Saiyan warrior Goku, who grew up and trained on Earth.
The confrontation between Goku and Frieza begins in chapter 307 of Dragon Ball. At this time, Goku has just suffered a Zenkai attack after being severely injured by the leader of the Ginyu Force, and his strength at this time is still not comparable to Frieza.
Specifically, at that time Goku had a fighting power of about 200,000, but Frieza claimed that his power was over 1 million. However, everything changed when Goku first achieved the legendary Super Saiyan state.
At the moment when Goku overwhelmed him, the tyrant Frieza decided to end everyone by blowing up planet Namek. He launched an energy ball into the center of planet Namek and declared that everything would be destroyed in 5 minutes. However, those 5 minutes started in chapter 320 and ended only in chapter 327 of the manga. In the anime, it lasted from episode 98 to episode 106, and if we do some basic math, it's almost 3 hours.
This 5 minute delay later became a huge meme in the Dragon Ball community. There are also several explanations for this 5 minute delay, such as the anime adding extra scenes, mostly dialogue, to extend the episodes even further, as the anime was moving too fast, about to catch up with the manga.
Also, a fan theory suggests that everything in Dragon Ball happens so fast that only Ki can be felt. So, like a slow motion movie, these 5 minutes were slowed down so that viewers can keep up and feel the dramatic fight. We have seen that the two opponents move close to the speed of light, so it makes sense to illustrate this in a slower way.
Another interesting theory that explains why 5 minutes is so long is because Frieza is an alien with a different concept of time. The way Earthlings count time may be different from Frieza's.
Regardless, the fight between Goku and Frieza is truly a timeless one, and the fact that fans continue to discuss issues like this over 30 years later proves it.