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. In previous episodes of You Vs, we’ve
told you how to take on everything from alien Predators to unkillable wise cracking superheroes,
so what about a guy who’s just too crazy to die? 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.
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 sodomising 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. 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 desensitised 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, have 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.
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 demeanour. 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.
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.
But Trevor isn’t just a violent psychopath for fun, he’s also a violent psychopath for profit.
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.
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.
When smuggling ceased to be a satisfying career prospect, Trevor and Michael moved
into high-stakes jewellery 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.
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 organisation. 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?
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.
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 Phillips? 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. So, with all this salient data in mind,
how the heck do you actually take this guy on? 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.
Check out our “You Vs” playlist for more exciting videos on how to defeat some
of pop culture’s biggest badasses, monsters, heroes, and psychopaths.