Condolences on your loss
As for the gremlins...think of getting your home computer wet by dripping water into the case
These days, any newer vehicle is no different than your computer
At signal level voltages & currents...it doesn't take much to create shorts and/or couplings between lines. Toss in high frequencies that some subsystems employ
Not salt water (the worst), but washed dust/etc during it's path to the dash.
Meaning made conductive...high resistance shorts
An analogy would be old time ignition with a distributor & getting water in there
Good luck !