Following Triple H's betrayal of Seth Rollins in 2016, both Triple H and Stephanie would oft-cite Rollins's championship failures following the Dean Ambrose cash-in after his victory over Roman Reigns at Money in the Bank. The details of Triple H's and Rollins's year 2016 (up to that point) actually provide some calls back to Triple H's in-ring career and in particular his infamous Reign of Terror period, which might further explain why the betrayal happened when it did:
For one thing, Triple H lost the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania to Reigns, only for Rollins, his protégé, to beat and take said championship from Reigns months later. Twelve years beforehand, Reigns's equivalent was a tragically infamous man and Rollins's role was played by Randy Orton — whose entire future changed forever 24 hours later when Triple H violently ejected Orton from his seat of confidence as the crown jewel of Evolution. Hunter was probably seething when Rollins not only repeated Orton's feat of beating the man he couldn't beat but kept himself ingratiated to Stephanie in the meantime, forcing the Helmsleys to keep using him, despite the fact that…
…immediately following Rollins's victory over Reigns came the cash-in by Ambrose. However, that was followed by neither Rollins nor Reigns taking the title back from Ambrose in the wake of the new brand split, resulting in the title going to Shane McMahon's SmackDown and Raw being forced to create a new championship out of whole cloth. Fourteen years prior in the early throes of the first brand split, the WWE Undisputed Championship was initially defended on both brands — until Brock Lesnar and his agent Paul Heyman, fresh off beating The Rock for the title at SummerSlam, decided to make the title SmackDown exclusive. This left then-Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff to revive what used to be WCW's World Heavyweight Championship and literally hand it to Triple H. Stephanie, who was the SmackDown General Manager at that time, was now the Raw commissioner trying to give Rollins an advantage when she placed him in the first Universal Championship match against an opponent who would have to earn the right through victory in a one-night tournament. But Rollins managed to both lose the title match at SummerSlam and injure his opponent, top NXT prospect Finn Bálor, in the process; meaning the championship became vacant within 24 hours of establishing its lineage. Not only did Rollins coming up short against Ambrose force Raw to repeat the cycle of losing the WWE Championship and having to create a new top title without the impressions of a historic championship backing it this time, the attempt at a subtle hand-off to Seth backfired so badly that the entire launch of the new championship was a catastrophic failure. First invoking Triple H's raging jealousy, then outliving his usefulness to him? Yeah, the next hand-off was NOT going to Rollins.
It would make sense for Triple H's character to be a Fourth-Wall Observer in Kayfabe. After all, who was involved in the now infamous Curtain Call of 1996 and had to take the blame?
Triple H has long been accused (at least by the IWF) of "burying" talent to advance himself. This may or may not be true, at least so long as he was a regular competitor fighting for the main event. Pictures of HHH holding a shovel to signify this belief are most prevalent and popular. But now that Hunter is the head of NXT, WWE's in-house farm system, he is responsible for cultivating the next generation of WWE Superstars and has received widespread accolades for his successful efforts in making NXT a modern-day phenomenon. So it looks like Hunter's now using that shovel to build, instead of bury.
