Wilson Phillips

Phillips is a short, heavyset man of middle age, his mustache reduced to two little tufts of whiskers at either side. He dresses in a two-piece dark suit set off by a vivid polka-dot bow tie, and tops the look with a trilby.

At the outset Phillips plays the mild gentleman, indifferent to those around him and able to smile even at the stranger who has just broken his driver's arm and climbed into his car. He is sure of his own standing, insisting that no one may lay a hand on a United States senator and picturing himself as a future president. His inner monologue betrays sweeping delusions of grandeur, a running tally of his triumphs and a conviction that he is unstoppable, even as DIO plainly demonstrates the power to kill him on the spot. Only when the vampire proves unmoved by his threats does he confront the one force he cannot bully, and his brittle ego collapses; under that pressure his sanity slips away and he ceases to care about anything at all.

By his own reckoning, Phillips finished at the top of his high school and college classes, captained his college wrestling team, and rose into a respected political career. He married a model twenty-five years his junior, kept a thousand-acre villa in Hawaii, and boasted of paying fifty times the taxes of an ordinary citizen.

In the Stardust Crusaders anime, DIO halts his car while chasing Joseph Joestar. The driver tries to intimidate the intruder and has his arm snapped for it, after which DIO climbs in and is greeted by a friendly Phillips who notes the injured man can no longer drive. Ordered to give chase himself, the senator is beaten despite invoking his influence, and, trapped inside by The World, has no choice but to obey. Forced to plow through a road packed with vehicles, he loses his mind and takes up the pursuit of his own accord until the car crashes and kills him, his body then hurled at Joseph's car to block it.

The OVA reworks several beats. There DIO lets the car nearly run him down and freezes time just before impact, then enters to find a far more sincere Phillips who apologizes for his driver and even offers money for a taxi. Rather than pulling his teeth, DIO simply flings him to the front seat, and each time the senator tries to flee the car he finds himself looping straight back into it, leaving him no option but compliance. His death is changed as well: he collides with a moving train in a fiery explosion, after which DIO drags his corpse clear of the wreckage and resumes chasing the group.