ok, so i figured this one out after a few hours.
the issue is that in backtrack the themes are located under /opt/kde3/share/apps/ksplash/Themes, instead of the typical /usr/share/kde3/apps/ksplash/Themes directory where most distributions put theirs. after i figured this out, i booted to the live cd and dumped that folder to my /home/ folder and overwrote the default installed theme. i am uploading the backtrack theme in case anyone else encounters this issue and doesn't want to take all of those steps.
download here:
Backtrack-theme.tar.gz


