Nobody replied, but that's all good and I just figured I would reply to myself in case anyone else wants to do this. Taking off the manifold wasn't too terrible. Basically it involved removing the intercooler and its components, pulling the three hoses from the upper coolant reservoir and loosening its little holder bolt and slinging it to the side, loosening off the pcv hardline and electrical harness from the back of the IM, removing three hoses from the back-side of the manifold, pulling one small hose from the driver-side of IM, disconnecting the three gas lines that connect to the hardline on the driver-side (no need for a tool you can use a sharpie cap!), and removal of the throttle body (try to leave the intercooler hose attached to the throttle body if possible, it will make your life much easier). After removing the 8 IM to TGV and the four nuts on the studs, the IM was loose but it wouldn't come out. After multiple tries and head scratches I finally found a small bolt directly underneath the manifold, connecting it to a fuel hose hardline (I did not bother on reinstalling because that bolt made me mad).
While I had the IM out, I got four new gaskets (orange O-rings) for where it seals to the TGV's. I also got a new gasket for the throttle body and the intercooler --> turbo as well. I replaced ALL of vacuum, fuel, and coolant lines under the IM that were super hard from the years of heat cycles so that I would not have to go back in there again for the foreseeable future. A few were discontinued so I made my own with vacuum line from my local hardware store (super easy to do).
I MADE ONE BIG MISTAKE!! Call me dumb or whatever, but when I was looking up torque values for the IM to TGV, I was only seeing 18.1 ft lbs. This made sense to me because my last Subaru was 18.1. So here I am, torquing away on these bolts. I get to about 12 ft lbs on the first one and it just starts spinning. I tried another one, and another one, and then another one just to make sure. ALL OF THEM WERE SPINNING. So here I am thinking that the previous owner had some work done by a jackoff that stripped my TGV. Didn't I feel stupid the next day when I checked again and saw that the plastic manifold had a 6.1ft lbs torque to the TGV (I was the jackoff). I kicked myself a few times, but the damage was already done. My fix was to buy a tap that was the same spec as the bolt holes and I ran the tap by hand through every hole in hopes to fix them up. It worked relatively well or at least I was happy enough with the result, so I torqued to 6.1 with blue loctite and called it a day. And yes, I know I'm dumb.
Anyways, car is back together and I just drove it 1200 miles for a road trip and it ran like brand new so all is well! Hopefully someone can use this post in the future...