Was the fans embracing Bryan following his 18-second Mania loss part of the WWE's plan all along?
Judging from the fact that Smackdown tapings have been edited to eliminate his cheers and he had only become even more of a douche since then to counteract cheers, probably not.
After the 18 second loss, Bryan made better connections to the audience and gained more support and demand from them. Sheamus, on the other hand, just seemed to be there in comparison with his importance to the overall story-lines, despite receiving more support from booking and management. Given the above fridge brilliance, Bryan's storyline with Orton and HHH over the WWE title seemed to be creative making an almost meta storyline out of how popular Daniel Bryan is with the audience despite management attempting to push an "ideal" champ instead.
Nearly a half year using the move (and a lot of uses of the move) and Daniel Bryan's running knee still doesn't have a name yet. Nearly all unique finishers have names - even the ones that belong to jobbers that you have to dig to find. That means it's probably very purposeful. Here are two possible reasons:
In storyline, WWE hasn't bothered assigning a name to Bryan's running knee as a subtle Take That! and in trying to let him know that they don't feel like he belongs there.
Bryan hasn't picked a name for it himself as a way to make a point. The move itself is the definition of Simple, yet Awesome and a microcosm of Bryan's entire bearing. Bryan doesn't care about flash — he chooses moves that get the job done. And a knee forcefully applied to an opponent's skull, will usually get the job done. As of 3/10/14, he's finally given the move a name, "Knee +", a sarcastic jab at Stephanie grading him as a "B+".
Daniel Bryan's 2018 heel turn and the audience being ready (at least somewhat) to buy him as a heel is a case of Reality Subtext. The landscape of the WWE (perhaps due in no small part to Bryan himself) changed drastically in the 2-3 years Bryan was retired and in the 5 years since his big championship win at Wrestle Mania XXX. Bryan's face character was an everyman that was a smaller, technical workrate guy. When he originally won his title in 2014, the whole point of conflict was that he was atypical and didn't 'look' like he belonged in the ring with guys like John Cena and Randy Orton. Since then, NXT's growth (influenced, ironically, by Triple H, whose character spent the entirety of that angle trying to convince the fans that guys of Bryan's ilk didn't belong on the big stage) has filtered up to the main roster. (You could almost call it an NXT Takeover.) It's harder to get over as the "one wrestler in a room full of sports entertainers" when you return to a company where guys like AJ Styles and Seth Rollins are consistently hovering around, if not holding, its top titles.
Reaches it's natural conclusion with Bryan's heel turn in AEW. After almost a decade of spending time in WWE proving that he was a worthy star with his workrate and technical ability, Bryan is now in a far more comfortable environment with wrestlers of his similar style and structure and no longer needs to prove himself worthy. He's here for one purpose, to kick everyone's heads in. In fact, it's now AEW's roster that Bryan feels needs to prove themselves if they hope to stand a chance with him in the ring.
