There are villains who want revenge.

There are villains who want power.

Frieza already had an empire. He just wanted everyone to remember who owned it.

One of Dragon Ball's defining villains, Frieza is a galactic tyrant whose enormous military conquers worlds, destroys populations, and turns planets themselves into commodities. Elegant, calculating, monstrously powerful, and spectacularly cruel, Frieza can deliver a death threat with the manners of someone reminding you that dinner reservations are at eight.

Somehow, that makes it worse.

Frieza's history is inseparable from the Saiyans. Fearing their growing strength and the legends surrounding the Super Saiyan, he destroyed Planet Vegeta, leaving only a handful of Saiyans alive while continuing to manipulate survivors like Vegeta as useful servants.

That decision eventually produces one absolutely colossal problem:

Goku.

Their battle on Planet Namek becomes one of the defining confrontations in anime, pushing Goku beyond his limits until Frieza's cruelty finally helps trigger the legendary transformation the tyrant feared...

Super Saiyan.

Frieza survives because Frieza has always been exceptionally difficult to kill.

Over the years, he's returned rebuilt, resurrected, trained, transformed, temporarily allied with his enemies, and generally demonstrated that being blasted into pieces is more of a scheduling inconvenience than a permanent solution.

His many forms are a huge part of his collector appeal. First Form Frieza sits in his hover pod like an interstellar despot conducting business. His later transformations become increasingly monstrous before his sleek natural form strips the design down to something deceptively simple. Then come incarnations like Mecha Frieza, Golden Frieza, and Black Frieza, each giving one of Dragon Ball's most recognizable villains another way to ruin everyone's afternoon.

But underneath every transformation...

It's still Frieza.

Still arrogant.

Still vicious.

Still impeccably theatrical.

And still completely astonished whenever the universe refuses to acknowledge that everything in it should obviously belong to him.