I had to uninstall bootsplash since I wanted to make some changes. Shouldn't have done that since uninstalling it was a pain to start with.
Finally it unistalled by following a thread here on the forum. It stated:

you should modify the prerm scripts located under
/var/lib/dpkg/info/bootsplash-theme-*.prerm and comment out the
line with db_unregister. After that you should do an apt-get remove
--purge ".*bootsplash.*"

It worked just fine and everything seemed to be removed. No more errors in apt. Trying to reinstall doesn't work though. I get:

Preconfiguring packages...
Preconfiguring "bootsplash" failed with errorcode 10

and a few lines later:

dpkg: error installing bootsplash (--configure):
subproces post-installation script errorcode 10

the exact error might be different, I had to translate it.

After that the theme errors to but that normal since it depends on bootsplash.

I guess purge didn't remove all the bits and peaces of the old install since it keeps erroring even if I purge. Any clues on how to get it installed again?

Regards

Does this have any useful effect:

# dpkg --pending --configure

After a purge there is nothing to reconfigure. It should remove all that has to do with bootsplash and make a clean install possible. And that's just the problem. After a complete removal a reinstall still doesn't work.

Weird, I'm not sure if the bootsplash install touches other files. Could be that those files are your problem. The purge of bootsplash removes it but leaves the other files. I'll do some searching.