Here we present a shape recovery phenomenon of Pt-Ni bimetallic nanocrystals that is unequivocally attributed to the defect effects. High-resolution electron microscopy revealed the overall process of conversion from concave octahedral Pt3Ni to regular octahedral Pt3Ni@Ni upon Ni deposition. Further experiments and theoretical investigations indicated that the intrinsic defect-dominated growth mechanism allows the site-selective nucleation of a third metal around the defects to achieve the sophisticated design of trimetallic Pt3Ni@M core-shell structures (M = Au, Ag, Cu, Rh). Consideration of geometrical and electronic effects indicated that trimetallic atomic steps in Pt3Ni@M could serve as reactive sites to significantly improve the catalytic performance, and this was corroborated by several model reactions. The synthesis strategy based on our work paves the way for the atomic-level design of trimetallic catalysts.