Rewatched the king of the ring 1996. That was the most edgy product I have noticed since the debut of nitro. You had Austin 316 speech, Pillman talking about rape and screwing over the wwe universe. Jerry Lawler calling people in the crowd on camera face to face either alcocholics, prostitutes, obese individuals. Gold dust air resuscitation/kissing ahmed Johnson.
I've long been under the impression that the seeds of the attitude era were planted by creative almost as soon as Vince found out Nash and Hall were leaving for WCW. This isn't something that would've happened immediately either. I'm sure Vince knew by Wrestlemania 12 that they were gonna go. By then WCW already had a full time show routinely beating him in the ratings and a roster headlined by guys like Sting, Luger, Savage, Hogan and then they were going to get arguably two of the WWF's most popular stars. That is really bad any way you look at it.
I sincerely doubt Vince hit the panic button but you have to imagine that in the board meetings the words "We need to change our direction" were used. Fast-forward to KOTR 1996 and they're already experimenting with it just to see how people will react. Then you add the NWO angle singlehandedly revolutionizing the world of wrestling that summer and by that point Vince is taking the rest of 1996 as a test run for the attitude era. Slowly but surely you see his audience adapting to it and even wanting more. As far as I'm concerned the WWF was in full scale attitude era by spring 1997 and by Wrestlemania 13 the decision for an edgier product may as well had been etched in stonee. The only difference is that this new direction of WWF programming didn't have a name yet.
Seriously, you don't go and rename your show Raw is War and completely transform it overnight without several months of careful thought and consideration.
Edit: Seriously the degree of transformation the WWF underwent would be like taking my ordinary 9 year old little girl and then shaving her head, giving her tattoos piercing every possible thing on her face, dressing her and black, injecting her with testosterone and then she declares this male-like, gravelly voice "My name is snake now!!"