This is more to document the craziness but if you know what's going on or want to offer advice please jump in. I'll probably just edit this top post with any fixes I find to keep it compact and make new posts to bring it to the top if I think it's a worthy discovery.

Alright, it all began when bought thing but I didn't dig in to any of this until I installed new head unit and the screen would flicker from day to night mode when I turned on the headlights. This turned out to be a bad dimmer that was cutting voltage down and only outputting 6 to 8volts. To fix that I cut the switch off and crimped red to red and put the plug back in. No more dimming problems. Maybe I'll get a new dimmer switch some day.

While doing that I starting chasing down the weird and constant clicking noise from the footwell since that seemed to act differently depending on if the lights were on or off. Turns out it's the rear window relay and it clicks constantly when the lights are off. Turn the lights on and clicking stops and rear windows now work as they should. Lights off and they were clunky and barely would go up. I pulled the relay for now cause the clicking was super annoying.

I also have been wondering why my shifter lever gear lights on the center console flicker. Well that stops to when you turn the lights on too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My shifter lockout solenoid also clicks on and off when I'm on the brakes making it difficult to get out of park. Turn on lights and it's much smoother. Still jumpy but much less so. And there's also an associated clicking under the dash. I assume the relay but I haven't found it yet.