wilbur has a tendency to just find animals and beg phil to keep them as pets and phil’s become numb to it and so when wilbur says behind him, “look, phil, meet techno! he’s a pig! can we keep him?” phil says “okay, you just have to feed him and take care of him-” and then finally turns around and realizes wilbur is standing next to an anthropomorphic pig child, and not, in fact, a pig. wilbur decides techno is his brother three hours into knowing him. phil is a pushover and can’t bear to crush wil’s hopes and dreams. techno is just going along with it.

wilbur knows that something is stealing food from their trash cans, and thinks it’s a raccoon. wilbur is also a kindhearted dumbass, and leaves out food for the raccoon. he hides on the porch to see it. it is not a raccoon. it is a feral blond child. wilbur hides said child (aka tommy) in his closet for a week before phil finds him, at which point wilbur tells phil and techno that tommy is his new brother. phil takes one look at tommy, and starts giving wilbur the “you have to feed it and take care of it” lecture while techno pokes tommy with a stick.

phil and wilbur find a small child sitting in a box one day, and wilbur takes one look at him and says “look, phil, a new brother!” and phil, so done, raising one child and having to parent two others out of necessity, sees a small toddler who is very cute and seems sweet and regular and thinks “finally, wil picks a normal one.” they bring tubbo home, and the next day phil’s one hope for wilbur’s taste in adopted siblings goes up in flames, dying with the swingset after tubbo builds a tnt cannon using spare parts and blows it up accidentally. wilbur and techno are delighted. tommy thinks tubbo is epic. phil invests in copious quantities of coffee.

phil, jaded, old, and retired, expected all of the accruement of new family members to stop after wilbur’s death. he’d suspected fundy might be like wilbur, and had watched him fearfully, but fundy has not yet adopted any siblings and so phil felt safe. and then he’s introduced to michael, whom tubbo and ranboo cheerfully declare he is the grandfather? of, and phil looks into tubbo’s eyes and realizes with some horror that it wasn’t fundy who took after wilbur at all, but tubbo ‘i acquire father and older sibling figures like i’m collecting pokemon cards’ underscore.