There are several reasons why it appears that Trevor Phillips was making up the encounter between him and his mom in Grand Theft Auto 5.
Trevor Phillips’ mother only makes a single appearance during Grand Theft Auto 5, but after the whole bizarre encounter is over Trevor is left writhing on the ground in fetal position, leading many to question if what happened really occurred or if it was a figment of his imagination.
In Grand Theft Auto 5, at one point Trevor comes back to his trailer only to be started by the sight of his mother waiting for him inside. “So, you’ve done well for yourself,” she says to him, as he looks at her with wide eyes. “Is that how you greet your mother, Trevor?” Trevor replies by implying she had been in prison, saying, “I didn’t know they let you out.” His mother replies by complaining about his lack of contact, saying, “You never wrote me. You never visited. I bet you never found a girl. Tell me Trevor, are you gay? Is that what this is all about?”
Trevor’s mother continues to verbally berate him, asking why he hasn’t fixed her a drink or started massaging her feet. Strangely, this normally-violent Grand Theft Auto 5 character then gets on his knees and begins apologizing at his mother’s feet. When he asks what he can do for her, she instructs him to go pick up medication to ease her pain. “A truck load, literally,” she says before Trevor leaves through the door.
When Trevor returns, he’s shocked to find the trailer empty and no signs of his mother anywhere. Of course, it’s reasonable to assume she bailed on him, considering he’d implied throughout Grand Theft Auto 5's story that she was neglectful. But Trevor’s strong reaction may suggest he had made the encounter up. As soon as she realizes she’s nowhere to be seen, he gets on the floor in a fetal position and begins wailing loudly. He was clearly in mental duress, and while this could’ve been brought on by being abandoned by his parental figure yet again, it could also be Grand Theft Auto 5’s way of implying he was imagining his mother. Trevor’s history of mental instability and deranged, unpredictable behavior also lends fuel to the theory.
There are other facts to support the idea of Trevor's mom being a hallucination. Trevor is Canadian, which implies his mother is Canadian, too. She’d most likely still live in Canada, meaning it doesn’t make sense how she’d show up in L.A. so suddenly and then vanish without warning. Where exactly would she go if she wasn’t familiar with the city? There’s also the question of how she so easily found Trevor. She made a point to mention they hadn’t had contact when she was in jail, and given that Trevor was laying low while working on his criminal enterprise in Grand Theft Auto 5, she would’ve been hard-pressed to find his trailer out in the middle of nowhere.
Finally, some players have suggested online in various fan communities that Trevor’s mother could be dead in GTA 5. Trevor expressed a lot of guilt upon first seeing his mother, which may suggest he has internalized, unresolved feelings about not having a good relationship with her, and if he doesn’t have a chance to patch things up, it’s all the more difficult for him to process. Some theories have gone so far as to suggest Trevor may have somehow had responsibility in his mother’s death, given how guilty and spooked he is when he first sees her in the trailer. But, alas, with few details provided about Trevor’s mother in Grand Theft Auto 5, much is left up for the player to decide for themselves.
