[General Questions and Answers] k3ttle:
Awesome thanks so much! Enjoy dinner and I will get to work putting down what I did. Thanks so much!

---------- Post added at 10:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:09 PM ----------

Ok so now that I can paste links (I hope) here is the link I followed originally (after installing AutoRec on my stock 5.0.1 to access the download mode):

https://www.reddit.com/r/LGG3/comments/2nv2tn/so_i_tried_to_root_my_phone_today_and_this/cmh8pky

I got down to the section on installing TWRP, and it was after that I started bumping into issues. Here is the guide I followed to a "T" to do the downgrade:

http://www.androidrootz.com/2014/07/how-to-unroot-lg-g3-all-variants.html?m=1

That went without a hitch, then I used Stump 1.20 APK per the reddit to get root access. I used Flashify to install TWRP onto my phone.

So where things fell apart for me, is when I was next going to try install Cyanogen 12.1 onto the phone. I got an error about not having 23b on the device. But at that point I was downgraded to Stock 4.4.2 via the guide (rooted and TWRP installed) and I was concerned if I tried to upgrade the modem, boot, or system img's with the older android that it would brick the phone.

I thought ok no biggie, I will just follow the guide, go back to stock and get rid of TWRP and just do OTA updates to the latest Android.

This is when I realized I had no access to the download. That is when I got frantic and started making really bad decisions. So I thought maybe I could update OTA since I was running the stock 4.4.2 ROM and maybe keep my custom recovery and figure a way to preserve root so I could at least run a bloatware remover and use titanium to freeze the OTA updater app.

So I tried to let it OTA update, which of course left me in a bootloop with TWRP not able to access the OS at all. Now I am REALLY frantic.

So I found this link for folks like me that did stupid crap and got stuck in a bootloop, so downloaded this zip and ran it in TWRP and got back into my stock 4.4.2 OS (but still no access to download mode)

http://xdaforums.com/lg-g3/development/fix-stuck-custom-recovery-trying-ota-t2907508

So that was probably really bad since I don't know what that actually does, but it worked to get me back to the phone.

Since AutoRec worked to get me into Download in the first place, I was hoping I could get onto a 5.x.x version of Android and download it as there was no version available for my phone for 4.4.2, so I decided to try flashing Cloudy since I couldn't get CM12.1 on without flashing to higher firmware files, which I feared would brick the phone running newer firmware under older Android.

So I got Cloudy flashed onto the device and installed AutoRec, but it didn't help. I tried hitting the restore stock option on it, but I assume that since I installed it on Cloudy and it ran a backup on opening it, I assume it just tried to restore from Cloudy (thus not restoring stock files). I backed up my stock 4.4.2 ROM using Clockwork mod since it supports TWRP, so I do have a backup of it that. But since I didn't have root under my stock 5.0.1, I couldn't do a nandroid backup so I assume that the ROM backup that CWM performed does me no good for getting my stock recovery and FW back. I was hoping I could just follow the original TOT guide to get back to stock, but no matter what I have tried I can't get back to the download mode to try it so I am basically stuck.

Just to note I am running on the assumption that getting into download mode is required for me to use the LG Flash tool to push the stock files back to the device. If there is another way to do it through TWRP then great. Or if I have to get to download mode to push the stock files back, then I am assuming getting that function back is the main goal. But maybe I am totally wrong being that I only seem to have learned enough to be dangerous from the various guides out there. So don't let my assumptions mislead you. Thanks so much for reading all this!