2011 Macbook Pro boots, all keys seem to function, blank screen

Yesterday at around 5pm EST my Macbook Pro (2011 model with the AMD Radeon HD 6750M) froze while browsing the internet (specifically XDA-Developers). This wasn't a normal " freeze" were it starts responding after a few minutes. Nothing would function, the caps lock key wouldn't light up, etc. Naturally, I held down the power button and shut my laptop down assuming it would work upon rebooting. Unfortunately when it started booting it just got stuck on the gray screen sans Apple logo. Now this is where things got weirder:

I tried turning it on again, but nothing happened. I didn't get any chime or anything. I began looking up troubleshooting guidelines on the internet and reset PRAM, NVRAM, SEC etc. Occasionally I would get it to boot and I tried booting into my Windows 7 partition, but it just stalled on the Windows 7 starting logo. After this I had continued problems where sometimes the screen would display vertical lines ontop of the gray screen, horizontal lines covering the bottom half of the screen while constantly making the booting noise but not actually changing, and just not turning on at all.

Finally I let it sit for awhile and turned it on. I got the chime and decided to just let it be, thinking it might fix itself. Now, all my keys work, I can change the volume and hear it and I can even play/pause a song through the respective button. Unfortunately, the screen is just completely off, no backlight at all.

I know this isn't the Nvidia issue since I have an AMD graphics card, but I have run out of options. I booked an appointment at an Apple store, but I'd prefer to fix it myself. It seems like it is a problem with the graphics card though, maybe a loose connection. Does anyone have any idea what it could be? I typed this on my phone BTW, so sorry for any typos (I tried to correct everything).