So is my iMac messed up, or what?

[definitive]

Screen: already has burned in lines across it at the top, bottom and sides. i left it off for over 7 hours - nothing. Ran it on with light single color background for another 5 hours - nothing. Ran another hour of the unstick pixel video (read on another site that it might help) - nothing.

Then today I was in Windows for about half hour. Picked the option to restart in OSX. As soon as the sound goes on, the fans go crazy and start spinning full speed. I literally had papers fly off of my table that were laying on the computer's stand. Touched the top (where it usually gets warm (compared to the bottom)), and the temperature didn't seem out of the ordinary. I ran the iStat Pro and it didn't show fan speeds, only HD temp at 50 degrees. After several shut downs, unplugging power plug for several seconds, the problem finally went away.

Should I even bother searching for any more alternative solutions, or should I just take it to Apple to see what they'll say?

 

[iLog.Genius]

You did the right thing by doing an SMC reset as some iMac's will do that even when there is nothing wrong with it. After resetting the SMC, has your problem occurred again and is everything running again? If everything is OK I wouldn't worry about it too much. If it happens again, it's something you might want to take a look at.

 

[definitive]

The fans are spinning normally, and are showing up correctly along with the rest of the temperature sensors in iStat Pro. The screen still shows the "burn-in-like lines" just like yesterday.

 

[Hellhammer]

The fans are spinning normally, and are showing up correctly along with the rest of the temperature sensors in iStat Pro. The screen still shows the "burn-in-like lines" just like yesterday.

Give Apple a call about those "burn-in-like lines".