Strange Things Everyone Ignores About Triple H

WWE's most recent Hall of Fame inductee, Paul "Triple H" Levesque, has been in the business for over 30 years and has gone through quite the transformation. Long gone are his days as "Terra Ryzing," and he's evolved from the leader of one of the raunchiest stables in professional wrestling history, D-Generation X, to leading the entire WWE as its Chief Creative Officer and head of main roster creative. While many have sung the praises of Triple H and his booking in recent years, there are still plenty of things everyone just straight up ignores about his past.

Triple H is known for many accomplishments in the ring during his Hall of Fame career. He won 14 world championships and multiple other titles at his peak, won two Royal Rumble matches, and headlined WrestleMania numerous times. Despite all his title wins and the successful stables he's been part of, such as DX and Evolution, there have been aspects of his career that fans tend to ignore, whether they're separating Triple H's in-ring career from his personal life or have just straight up forgotten due to how small they may seem in his vast history with WWE.

From his multiple failed gimmicks before settling into "The Game" character, to his relationship with a fellow DX member that turned sour with Hall of Fame implications lasting to this day, to his attempted run at Hollywood and an uncomfortable R-rated segment in a funeral home that WWE would love for all fans to forget, there are quite a few strange things about Triple H that fans tend to ignore.

While he may be known by nicknames now like "The Game" and "The King of Kings," when Triple H first broke into the business in 1992 he used the ring name "Terra Ryzing," a play, of course, on "terrorizing." While the name itself is strange, another fact that WWE fans often ignore, or perhaps don't even know about, is the fact Triple H got his professional start in WCW, the very same company he would later attempt to storm during the "Monday Night Wars," dressed in camouflage on a Jeep made to look like a tank alongside the rest of DX.

Terra Ryzing evolved from his original villain name of "Terror Risin'," and later he changed gears into a completely new character that fans may know a bit better: Jean-Paul Levesque, the stuck-up French aristocrat. The character played off of Triple H's real surname and its French origins, and he revealed recently on "Jimmy Fallon" that WCW officials originally wanted him to cut promos in French. He explained he was never able to speak the language, so the promos were cut in a French accent. The aristocrat gimmick led to him being briefly paired with Lord Steven Regal, or William Regal as fans know him today, from late 1994 to 1995. That's how the men became close friends, and Regal would later serve alongside Triple H when they were both "WWE NXT" officials.

Levesque wasn't long for WCW after teaming up with Regal, however. He left for the then-WWF in January 1995 and turned his gimmick into "The Connecticut Blueblood" Hunter Heart Helmsley.

Another thing WWE fans ignore about Triple H is the number of questionable moments in which he's been involved throughout his career, with many occurring in the company's infamous Attitude Era. Fans have noted the racial undertones in some of these storylines over the years. In recent memory, fans have found footage of Triple H mocking Mark Henry in 1998, pretending to be a monkey and gesturing toward Henry as he walked to the ring for a match against D-Generation X. DX caught heat at another point in the Attitude Era when they appeared in blackface to mock The Nation of Domination on an episode of "Monday Night Raw."

Triple H and Booker T's feud over the World Heavyweight Championship ahead of WrestleMania 19 caught heat from fans immediately back in 2003. Throughout the feud, Booker T. was open about his previous struggles in life, including his prison time for an armed robbery in 1987. The storyline saw Booker T climb his way to the top to challenge Triple H on "The Grandest Stage of Them All" after winning a 20-man battle royal, and he even eliminated The Rock to become number one contender. 

Triple H took aim at Booker T's time in WCW and downplayed his multiple WCW World Heavyweight Championships and called the title a "joke." At the worst point of the feud, Triple H said that "people like Booker T" could never be World Champion. While Triple H said that he was referring to his challenger's criminal past, many fans took that to believe Triple H said Booker T couldn't be champion because he is Black. After all the controversy of the feud, Booker T still lost at WrestleMania.

Triple H's relationship with fellow DX member Chyna isn't strange in itself, but it's something WWE tends to ignore. Triple H and Chyna began dating in 1996 years after they had trained together at Killer Kowalski's wrestling school in Massachusetts. Chyna first debuted as Triple H's valet, but very quickly became a megastar on her own. The pair were together until 2000 when Triple H began a storyline with Stephanie McMahon. According to Chyna, their relationship wasn't just a storyline, and Triple H and McMahon had an affair while Chyna and Triple H were engaged.

In 2012, Chyna recalled how she discovered Triple H was having an affair. She said about six months in to the McMahon/Hemsley storyline on TV, Triple H began acting strange at home. She explained she went through his briefcase because she knew something was off, and found a love letter from McMahon. Both Triple H and McMahon have never publicly commented on how things went down, but Chyna left the company abruptly, with no "goodbye" to her fans in 2001.

After not being re-signed to WWE, Chyna entered the adult film industry, which has often been the reason cited as to why she has not been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a singles star, though she was posthumously inducted as a member of D-Generation X in 2019, three years after her death in April 2016. Throughout the years, Triple H was adamant that his ex would never go into the Hall of Fame due to her adult industry career, but fan backlash over the years has seemingly made the now-CCO reconsider. During his own induction in 2025, he promised Chyna would be honored as a singles star, but did not say when she would be inducted.

When it comes to the meteoric rise of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, it's often ignored that Triple H's punishment for the Curtain Call is part of the reason why we have the "Stone Cold" we have today. Austin won the 1996 King of the Ring tournament, and after the match, launched into the "Austin 3:16" promo that would send him to stardom, but Austin was initially not meant to win the match. Triple H was meant to be the 1996 King of the Ring, but the infamous kayfabe-breaking incident led to him not winning the tournament.

The Curtain Call saw Triple H and then-WWF Champion Shawn Michaels hug it out in the middle of the ring at Madison Square Garden with Kevin Nash and Razor Ramon after Michaels had defeated Nash in a steel cage match, as the latter men were leaving the company. While they were all so close friends, they were known as "The Kliq" backstage; fans didn't know that these heel and babyface characters actually didn't hate each other. While the bout and post-match angle weren't televised, a fan in the audience had a camera and captured the kayfabe-breaking moment, and Vince McMahon was not pleased. Nash and Razor had left for WCW, Michaels was champion, and so the punishment for the Curtain Call fell on Triple H.

Instead of winning King of the Ring, Hunter Hearst Helmsley was eliminated in the first round of the tournament by Jake "The Snake" Roberts. Austin would win the tournament, cut the 3:16 promo, and rose to stardom while Triple H found himself rarely on "WWE Raw" for the next five months until he was booked to win the Intercontinental Championship from Marc Mero.

You can't talk about WWE history without mentioning Triple H's numerous reigns with the World Heavyweight championship, but many fans ignore that other, more hardcore fans call it his "Reign of Terror," and it's something WWE chooses not to acknowledge, as well. The Reign of Terror refers to the five times, and combined 600-plus days, that Triple H held the belt between 2002 and 2005 during WWE's Ruthless Aggression era. To make matters worse, Triple H was just handed the "big gold belt," which was reintroduced by "WWE Raw" General Manager Eric Bischoff. "The Game" was simply dubbed the inaugural World Heavyweight Champion to kick off the era. 

He was almost always in the championship picture and was notorious for not wanting to put talent over. Triple H ran through the likes of Booker T, Scott Steiner, Randy Orton, who at the time was trying to break away from Evolution and become a singles star, and more. Fans grew to resent Triple H for his dominance over the men's division on "Raw," and during that time, "WWE SmackDown" was often seen as the weaker show after the brand split to start off the new era, despite the likes of Brock Lesnar, Eddie Guerrero, Kurt Angle, and more putting on excellent performances every week.

The "Reign of Terror" was winding down when former Evolution stablemate Batista won the 2005 Royal Rumble. He chose to challenge Triple H for the belt, turning babyface in the process, and won the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 21. Batista won clean and even successfully defended the title twice against "The Cerebral Assassin," signifying a new era on "Raw."

While some former WWE superstars, like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and John Cena, have gone on to have extremely successful movie and television careers, Triple H's time in Hollywood is something that's often ignored. He was involved in a few movies while he was at the top of his in-ring game, but either the movie or his character is often forgotten. His first movie role is arguably his biggest, despite not being the main character of the film. He first starred in 2004's "Blade Trinity" alongside Wesley Snipes. Triple H played a vampire who served as a henchman to the film's antagonist. Not even a vampire wrestler could save the film, however, and it was the worst-reviewed movie of the "Blade" trilogy.

After taking an extended break from both acting and in-ring competition due to a torn quad, he went on to star in a WWE Films movie called "The Chaperone" in 2011. Triple H played Ray Bradstone, a former getaway driver on the straight and narrow. The character decides to take one last job with a gang of criminals, but changes his mind at the last minute and chooses to chaperone his daughter's field trip instead. His character has to deal with the fallout from leaving the crooks without a getaway driver, all while dealing with a school bus full of kids.

The film did not go over well with audiences and proved to be Triple H's last big foray into acting. He would lend his voice to "Scooby-Doo! and the WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon" and "Surfs Up 2: WaveMania," but his time in live-action movies ended with "The Chaperone" and its 31% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Fans tend to ignore Triple H's involvement in one of the most disturbing wrestling segments in history, for good reason. During Triple H and Kane's feud in 2002, "The Game" aired Kane's storyline dirty laundry to the crowd and told a story of an incident where a younger Kane was drinking and driving with a friend, a woman named Katie Vick, in the car. The pair got into an accident where Kane survived, but his girlfriend was killed. Triple H said that Kane's DNA was found inside Vick's body during the autopsy and implied that "The Big Red Machine" was a necrophiliac.

To make matters even worse, Triple H continued the storyline the following week and aired a video of himself on "WWE Raw" where he was seen wearing a Kane mask inside a funeral home where a casket sat open. A mannequin wearing a cheerleader uniform, meant to be Vick's "body," was lying in the casket. Triple H began to talk to the "body" and climbed into the coffin after undressing and simulated sex with the dummy. 

The angle thankfully didn't go on much longer as the week after the "footage" aired, Kane's tag team partner, The Hurricane, showed his own embarrassing video of Triple H and a sledgehammer to the audience. The cringeworthy angle is something fans tend to put out of their minds on purpose, for just how cringeworthy it really was, and it's certainly something the current head of main roster creative would like everyone to ignore.

Triple H is infamous in the eyes of fans for "squashing" and burying talent (see: the Reign of Terror), but fans tend to ignore, or just forget, the fact that he was squashed on "The Grandest Stage of Them All" in 1996. Hunter Hearst Helmsley was defeated by Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 12 after Warrior came back from a four-year hiatus. During the match, Warrior no-sold all of Triple H's offensive, including his finisher, the Pedigree, and beat the future "Game" in just under two minutes.

According to Warrior, Triple H didn't take too kindly to being squashed even back then, as their WrestleMania bout was two months before The Curtain Call, so Helmsley was still on the rise. Warrior said that Triple H cried to Jerry Brisco about his issues with the match, rather than talking to him directly. Warrior explained the match was nothing personal, as he was a bigger star than Triple H at the time. He called the younger man a "puny little b******" and a "puny little s***head."

The men only went face-to-face at WrestleMania 12, as Warrior's return to the company in '96 failed after he missed several WWE house shows without letting the company know. His contract was terminated, and he went on to sign with WCW in 1998. By the time Warrior signed with WCW, Triple H had recovered from the Curtain Call and was back on the rise.

It's not entirely strange for a WWE star to go into the Hall of Fame while they're still an active wrestler, as Rey Mysterio was inducted in 2023, but Triple H is the first WWE official to be honored while still in a major position of power. He was inducted as part of D-Generation X back in 2019, back when he wasn't wrestling full-time and all other members of the faction, outside of AEW's Billy Gunn, had also retired. But, in 2025, WWE revealed he would be headlining that year's class, despite still running the show on a daily basis as CCO. Many fans questioned the move, as many had been critical online and on social media of Triple H often alluding to not wanting to be on WWE programming, but seemingly always finding a way to get himself on air.

It wasn't Triple H to announce himself for the Hall of Fame, however, as best friend Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker surprised him during a WWE town hall meeting with investors at WWE headquarters. "The Game" was reportedly "genuinely shocked" by the honor, though fans questioned just how much he knew ahead of time. Michaels did the honor of inducting his friend into the Hall of Fame during WrestleMania 41 weekend, and during his speech, Triple H praised former WWE CEO, and his father-in-law, the disgraced Vince McMahon.