Lover. Fighter. Entrepreneur. Meth dealer. Meth user. Bank robber. Kidnapper. Mass murderer. All of these choice words accurately describe Trevor Phillips, the deranged, bloodthirsty, and hilariously violent criminal disaster-mind from the dusty boondocks near GTA V’s city of Los Santos.
And here’s some unfortunate news: Trevor wants to kill you! Why? Well, with Trevor Phillips, there’s rarely a why. Maybe you’re competition to Trevor Phillips Enterprises, his budding smuggling and methamphetamine empire. Maybe you witnessed a crime he committed and he’s just cleaning up.
Or maybe it was something a little more minor – like you looked at him funny, or he just felt like killing someone, and you happened to be around at the time.
Whatever the case, you have one of the most bombastic psychopaths in video game history on your tail, and you need to survive, or even turn the tables and defeat the gun-loving gangster.
As always, the first rule of war is to know your enemy. Who is this psychotic career criminal, and what skills, equipment, and allies does he have at his disposal? Let’s enter Trevor Phillips 101 and take a look.
Who is Trevor Philips?
Trevor was born into an abusive and neglectful family just North of the Canadian border. Just, whatever you do, don’t call him Canadian, or your chances of survival will get even lower.
Trevor seemed almost destined for a life of crime from a young age, with naturally violent tendencies made only worse by his awful home life. According to Trevor’s own words, he was eventually abandoned by his dad in a shopping mall, which he later burned to the ground out of spite. Part of the reason that Trevor is such a grave threat to your wellbeing is that he’s gotten pretty damn good at hurting people after years of experience.
He took part in fights throughout middle and high school, including sodomizing his gym coach with a hockey stick. We’re betting it’s probably been a while since you even punched someone, if you’ve ever actually been in a fight at all, that is.
You need to be getting some serious hours in at your local martial arts dojo before you can give or take a punch like crazy, crazy Trevor. And we’re not talking about just working the bag here, either – You’re not ready for a real fight until you’ve gotten comfortable with being punched in the face. That’ll take practice for you, whereas Trevor has already been there since his teen years, or even before.
Murders people for fun
It’s also heavily implied that Trevor may have even murdered his own brother, and pretended it was an accident. Considering you’re a total stranger that he has no emotional attachment to, trying to appeal to his sense of sympathy probably won’t do you any good.
Like a lot of budding serial killers, Trevor apparently killed plenty of animals, as well as a few drifters, before getting into crime as a living. In other words, we’re talking about a man utterly desensitized to violence.
This is one of Trevor’s greatest abilities in a psychological sense: He’s completely indifferent to the violent acts he’s performing. His naturally unhinged temperament, coupled with years of drug abuse, has also made him highly unpredictable – both in his actions and his fighting style.
Take one of Trevor’s first actions in the game: His brutal murder of Johnny Klebitz, leader of The Lost Motorcycle Gang. As both the head honcho of an infamous biker gang and the playable character in a previous game, Klebitz is clearly not someone to be messed with…unless you’re Trevor Phillips.
After shamelessly having sex with Johnny’s girlfriend, Ashley, Trevor plays apologetic – bringing Johnny into a hug and talking very reasonably to him. That is, until he pushes Johnny to the ground, smashes a beer bottle into his face, and stomps on his head so hard that fragments of his brain are lodged in the treads of Trevor’s boots.
If just the thought of that made you feel a little queasy, then you’re in for a really rough time. Trevor is the king of psyching out his opponents with unconventional tactics to secure the win – up to and including dropping his pants to distract and freak out his potential enemy combatant.
Likes to intimidate his prey
When going into a fight with Trevor, you have to be ready for anything and everything, from him stomping heads to hanging dong. Trevor likes to intimidate his opponents with his larger than life personality and violent demeanor.
While he may seem like a purely physical opponent on account of his lack of formal education and proclivities towards brain-frying hard drugs, Trevor first takes advantage of the battlefield of the mind by making you utterly terrified of him before he even throws a punch.
If you want to defeat him, you need to develop an iron will, and keep your head in the fight at all times. Cause if he makes you afraid of him, you’re probably gonna end up in a ditch somewhere, full of bullet holes and on fire.
Can fight multiple opponents at once
So, we now know that Trevor is a crazed, experienced, and unpredictable hand-to-hand fighter, who uses his frightening mannerisms and reputation to psyche out his opponents before trouncing them with sudden, brutal force.
We also know he can easily take on multiple civilian opponents at once – as he slaughters his unwilling roommates, Floyd and Debra, with little hesitation or effort. In case you were hoping to sneak up on Crazy Trev’ with a knife, just know that Debra was holding one right before he snatched it from her and stabbed her to death with it.
Of course, you’re ultimately pretty lucky if you end up taking on Trevor in a fist fight. After all, as crazy and violent as he is, he’s ultimately a mortal man, and maybe you’d get lucky. A shot of adrenaline and a moment of inspiration can turn the tide of a fight in some truly unexpected ways – no matter how unlikely.
Likes guns and knows how to use them
Unless your little confrontation happens in the form of a bar fight, chances are that Trevor is gonna come looking for you locked and loaded – with big, scary guns that he knows how to use.
Let’s take a gander at Mr. Phillips’ criminal career and some of his arsenal, and see if there are any ways you can potentially fight this hardened criminal off on that front.
Trevor cut his teeth as a professional outlaw with smuggling jobs performed with his good friend and criminal cohort, Michael Townley – later renamed Michael De Santa as part of his witness protection scheme.
His ruthlessness came into play nicely here, as, during one of his early jobs, he and Michael were betrayed by the buyer. Of course, Trevor and Michael managed to repel the enemy forces. In a particularly gruesome display of creativity, Trevor even shot one of them in the face with a flare gun, setting his eye socket on fire.
Can pilot anything
One key skill made Trevor a particularly adept smuggler, as well as an even more dangerous opponent for you, and that is the fact that he’s a trained Air Force pilot. Prior to becoming the murderous rogue we know and fear today, Trevor tried out for the Air Force, and completed his pilot’s training.
However, he ultimately wasn’t cleared for active service due to his mental instability. This still tells us that not only is Trevor a skilled pilot, but he was able to surpass Air Force physical fitness exams, and has some degree of professional military training.
In other words, unless you also happen to be an ace pilot, taking him down in a high-stakes aerial dogfight is a pretty unlikely prospect. Sorry to all the aspiring Top Guns out there.
Likes the smell of money
But Trevor isn’t just a violent psychopath for fun, he’s also a violent psychopath for profit.
When smuggling ceased to be a satisfying career prospect, Trevor and Michael moved into high-stakes jewelry and bank heists. This required both nerves of steel and a mastery over a number of firearms, both of which Trevor has. Sad day for you.
As a GTA protagonist, Trevor has so many guns he makes John Rambo look as anti-gun as the real-life Sylvester Stallone. These include pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, carbines, sniper rifles, explosives, miniguns, heavy machine guns, Molotov cocktails, and grenade launchers.
Unless you’re also sitting on an arsenal that your average doomsday prepper would consider “a little much”, and have John Wick level skills at using them, you’d likely be mincemeat in a direct firefight.
Demolished big organizations
Trevor has shown his gunfighting efficacy is truly frightening in a number of situations. He’s waged a one-man war against a number of rival gangs, massacring scores of bikers from The Lost, numerous gun-wielding hillbillies from the O’Neil crime family, and a heaping helping of gangsters from the Aztecas crime organization.
For an ostensibly normal human being – at least in the sense he doesn’t have any evil superpowers, thank god – he’s killed a frankly obscene number of people, from civilians who annoyed him to hardened criminals.
Are you really a good or lucky enough sharpshooter to be the exception?
He will hunt you down
Let’s say you try running from Trevor, thinking – with reasonable justification – that you probably couldn’t take him in a fight. Maybe the best way to “defeat” Trevor in a metaphorical sense is taking a boat to Panama, and living comfortably with martinis and a tax-free bank account until you die of old age.
And while that’s definitely a pretty romantic ideal, it wouldn’t exactly be easy for a few key reasons. The first is the fact that, as we’ve already established, Trevor is an excellent pilot. It wouldn’t be all that challenging for him to commandeer a plane and hunt you down like a dog.
But how could he hunt me down if he doesn’t know where I am? Fair question, but it’s probably safe to assume you’ve told at least one person where you’re heading.
A family member, a friend, or the company that sends you a fine selection of artisanal French cheeses every month. How sure are you that none of them would rat on you? Even if they don’t want to talk, Trevor has ways of making them talk.
Uses extreme torture measures
In the GTA V mission “By The Book”, Trevor shows that he’s adept in a number of torture methods when he goes full Jack Bauer on key witness Ferdinand Kerimov. While torturing Kerimov, Trevor employs a mix of waterboarding, vicious beatings with a wrench, electrical shocks, and even brutal tooth extraction with pliers.
Trevor is good enough at this to know how to use adrenaline shots to keep his victim lucid throughout the torture, and to ensure maximum pain. Running away might keep you safe for a little while, but there’s always the risk that – if he really wants you dead – Trevor will torture your friends and family to find your location and finish the job.
So, what do we know about Trevor Philips now?
He’s a deranged, murderous psychopath. He’s a pragmatic genius when it comes to hand-to-hand combat and gunplay. He’s a consummate career criminal who can do everything from flying planes to expertly torturing his victims. Oh, and he’s killed a lot of people.
What can you do to defeat Trevor?
While Trevor being an unpredictable psychotic definitely makes him a dangerous fighter, it also gives him a major weakness: Long-term planning is not Trevor’s strong suit.
He’s impulsive, and you can use that character flaw to your advantage. While Trevor may immediately set out on a rampage to kill you, if you’re smart enough to lay low, you may be able to get the drop on him in the place where he’d least expect a person running from him to be: His trailer.
A static trailer in Sandy Shores, a small town in the desert outside Los Santos, is Trevor’s primary residence. It’s not a fortified residence, and its isolation makes sneaking up on it relatively easy.
Trevor, like all human beings, still needs to sleep. And his tendencies towards drugs and booze mean that when Trevor crashes, he crashes hard. Keen GTA V players are no strangers to Trevor waking up in a haze, surrounded by empty beer bottles, and when better to take on a homicidal gangster than when he’s blackout drunk?
Wait until his next binge, if you can survive that long, then sneak into his trailer while he sleeps. At this point, it’s your choice. A shot in the head will put Trevor down just as easy as any man, but hey, it’s GTA.
Going full overkill and dropping a live grenade into his bed, or blowing the whole trailer to kingdom come from a distance with an RPG, is very much in the cards. And frankly, it’s probably the kind of totally insane way Mr. Phillips would want to go, too.
So that’s how you can defeat the ultimate psycho Trevor Philips.
Source: Envato.com & Rockstar Games Screenshots
