History Recap / DragonBallSuperUniverseSurvivalArc

** When Frieza and Goku meet at Uranai Baba's place goku can be seen recreating the fight he had with his Grandpa there.

** With Buu asleep for two months and the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in smoldering ruins, Goku has to find a replacement real quick. He then suggests the person everyone least expected and their worst enemy: Frieza. Despite his wrongdoings, Goku believes that Frieza won't risk betraying them with their very universe on the line, especially when he still wants to rule it.

** When Freeza and Goku meet at Uranai Baba's place goku can be seen recreating the fight he had with his Grandpa there.

** When Freeza and Goku remind each other of their deal, Goku subtly reminds Freeza of the last time he broke his promise back on Namek. Might as well be an ImpliedDeathThreat.

** Freeza's alliance with the rest of the Universe 7 fighters after Buu exhausts himself to continue. No one is happy about it, but Freeza agrees to help to ensure his own survival.

* EurekaMoment: Beerus starts yelling at the warriors for focusing their gathering efforts on Earth with only three hours left to go and blames them for wiping out the Freeza Force, who could have given them strong fighters... which makes Goku remember Freeza and decides to recruit him to the team.

** Ro and Sidra are totally shocked when Freeza doesn't even care if Universe 7 is wiped out should he join them and win. The thing that horrifies Ro the most is when he tries to appeal to some sort of favorite thing about the universe and Freeza flat out states that he has no such thing.
** Freeza himself is quite displeased when the Zen-O twins erase Universe 9. Yes, things have gotten so bad that ''Freeza'' actually has a moment of this. It's not so much the act itself though, but rather the contrast between the two Zen-Oh's playful attitudes and their actions and the [[AmbiguousInnocence careless attitude]] they display.
--> '''Freeza''' Those colorful brats... the contrast between their horrendous actions and attitudes couldn't be more different. Hmpf. One day I will rule over you.

* EvolvingCredits: Episode 95 makes a minor change with the ending credits, replacing the sleeping Buu with Golden Freeza. Episode 97 adds him into the opening and the bumper cards now includes him in Buu's place.

* OnOneCondition: Freeza accepts to join Goku's team, but only if he can revive the tyrant if they win. It is only through Whis after they win the tournament that Goku is able to hold his end of the bargain.

** Unsurprisingly, everybody calls out Goku for deciding to revive ''Freeza'' and make him part of their team.

** During the recruitment phase, Caulifla turning Super Saiyan as well as Goku and Freeza's battle both take place off-screen, it can be assumed that they happened more or less the same as what happened in the anime.

** After being teased heavily at the end of Chapter 38, the majority of Gohan vs Kefla occurred off-screen within the next chapter's first half, interspersed with other real-time developments like the similarily handled Vegeta vs Top fight. Much the aforementioned Goku and Freeza example, their equally damaged states before knocking each other out are the only clue indicating how grueling the battle must have been.

Around the halfway mark though, Jiren, who kept himself out of most fights, approaches Goku at the request of Vermoud, the God of Destruction of Universe 11, demanding to fight him. Goku attacks Jiren as hard as he can, but Jiren doesn't budge until Goku powers up to max, at which the fight begins. Even when using Kaioken x20, Jiren easily overpowers him, forcing Goku to use his trump card: the Spirit Bomb. Powered by all of team Universe 7, Goku uses the Spirit Bomb, but is shocked when Jiren begins pushing the attack back at him, even when gives his all to stop it. Despite this, Jiren manages to successfully reverse the Spirit Bomb, which engulfs Goku, causing everyone to think he has been killed by his own attack. \\

With Jiren being the final opponent left, Goku, Frieza, Vegeta, and 17 attempt to defeat him, but despite the numerical advantage, Jiren pushes everyone to their limits and knocks all of them out save 17. During this time, Vermoud reveals Jiren's past to the people left, which was that his family was killed by an evildoer, and Jiren was saved by a man who would train him to fight. Despite his training, Jiren's fight with the evildoer ended in failure, and his mentor was killed. Abandoned by his friends, Jiren trained to never rely on others, hence why he is as strong as he is. Realizing this, 17 calls out Jiren for using his allies to obtain his wish to revive his fallen comrades, while also pointing out that Jiren is too obsessed with the past. Angered by 17's words, Jiren attempts to eliminate Goku and Vegeta first with a powerful energy blast, which 17 attempts to block, but is forced to self-destruct himself to cancel out Jiren's attack, and give the two Saiyans a chance to rest. Vegeta is the first to fight Jiren, and while he gives his all while being too weak to even transform, Vegeta is pummeled and then knocked off the stage.\\

* ThePowerOfLove: Universe 2 ''[[IncrediblyLamePun loves]]'' this trope, even going so far as to utilize special wands that can transfer their concentrated love power to Brianne to grant her her SuperMode. This, in turn, ends up being Brianne's HoistByHerOwnPetard moment, as her opponent was Android #18, who overpowers her with her own power of love -- the love she has for Krillin.

** Kale. While she was inicially a weakling in her base form in the anime; in the manga, Frieza mention she was stronger in her base form than Super Saiyan Caulifla, and her SSJL mode was powerful enough to eliminate 4 universes in less than a minute.

* AWinnerIsYou: In-Universe example. After 17 is the only one left standing, there's no fanfare or ceremony. The Grand Priest just pops down and simply asks what he would like to wish for.

* ATruceWhileWeGawk: After Universe 9 is erased, everyone pauses for a moment from their fight to react to this -- mostly in horror that the Zen-Os will wipe out losing universes right then and there.
** When Goku and Jiren get ready to fight the other fighters on stage stop fighting to watch them.

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Frieza bargains with Universe 9's Supreme Kai and God of Destruction - resurrect him and let him join in on their team and he won't tattle to Zen-O for trying to kill them. They spend too much time arguing, allowing Beerus and Whis to arrive in time and Frieza to drop the offer.

** Family. Many of the fighters are motivated to fight because of their family waiting them at home. Vegeta, who just got Bulla, fights to the end because of her, Bulma and Trunks; Gohan is motivated out of his desire to ensure Videl's and Pan survival; Android 18 resolution to defeat Ribrianne comes from her love to his husband; Obuni, from U10, was motivated to keep fighting due to, like Gohan, being a father with a family waiting for him at home. Even Caulifla, a BloodKnight who accepted to join the Universe 6 team, was because of Cabba's assuring her of Renso's faith in her potential. Jiren, likewise, lost his family by an evil-doer when he was a kid, and his wish from the Super Dragon Balls is implied of wanting them back.

** In particular, some of the Universes focus so much on one concept for their team that they completely fail to do much. Universe 4 is focused on trickery, stealth, and underhanded tactics, which make them good at exploiting the arena to their advantage, but they also have only about three fighters who are strong enough to actually act as the groups muscle, and those ones get taken out very early on. Universe 10 creates a team focused on raw physical strength, and only that, so they more or less fail to knock anyone out because other fighters combine strength with skill or intelligence. Meanwhile, Universes like 2, 9, and 11 focus their teams around a single trio of their strongest fighters, so while their fighters are strong, the rest of the team is much weaker because of it, and as a result, once said strongest fighters are knocked out, they quickly are eliminated because they banked their chips on too few. Universe 11 is the only one to avoid this due to Top and Jiren being so freakishly strong that they alone could of carried their team, but their team is still focused around the two so much that without them and Dyspo, they would of lost fairly early on.

* HeroesFrontierStep: Android 17 did this when he at first sacrifice himself so his teammates can survive, then when he win the tournament he use his wish to bring back all the Universes that were erased.

* HiddenDepths: Both Goku and 18 share surprise when 18 reveals that 17's been working at an animal reserve, neither of them realizing that 17 was an animal lover.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Ultra Instinct is something that can be achieved in real life, it's based off the concepts of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_(mental_state) Mushin]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) Flow]].

* WhatLine: After Majin Buu falls asleep the, the rest of the Universe 7 team are desperate to find a replacement. Beerus laments that Frieza would be a suitable one, but was killed earlier. That's when Goku makes a suggestion that shocks everyone: ''Add Frieza to the team''.

** With Buu asleep for two months and the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in smoldering ruins, Goku has to find a tenth real quick. He then suggests the person everyone least expected and their worst enemy: Frieza.

* LeaderWannabe: Gohan is technically the leader of the Universe 7 team, but Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and the Androids immediately go off on their own. Only Krillin, Piccolo, Roshi, and Tien actually listen to him, with Roshi even lampshading that the other five were never going to stick to the plan.

** Also averted with Frieza, who has in fact gotten stronger since last time and according to several statements was either the team's third or second strongest warrior after Goku at the start of the tournament, competing with Vegeta. He spends the early parts of the tournament casually beating his opponents.

* ThousShaltNotKill: Participants of the tournament are allowed to incapacitate their opponents so they can be easier to throw off the ring, but under no circumstances are they allowed to kill them.

* MythologyGag: Goku's ascension to his Ultra Instinct form is a big one to his first transformation into a Super Saiyan: while locked in combat with an alien that is hailed as the strongest in his universe, Goku dials his Kaio-Ken up to 20[[note]]Including Goku's friends saying he could still use that technique before Beerus reveals that he's already used it, ''exactly'' like how the human characters thought Goku was holding the Kaio-Ken in reserve against Frieza before King Kai revealed he'd been using Kaio-Ken x10 the whole time.[[/note]] and when that fails resorts to using a Spirit Bomb. When '' that'' fails, Goku on the brink of defeat unlocks a new form, and even tilts his head towards Jiren the same way. Frieza even comments that he would expect nothing less from Goku.