I had the input gear out of my '97 2 months ago, just to check for wear and bearing damage, it just pulled straight out back with a slight rotation to account for the helical cut of the gears through the opening after removing that plate, (PTO/ bearing support).
When I said I had seen worse lash than that I meant really bad wear, I did the same job on a mates Deefer County with LT77 and whatever transfer case a year or so ago, and the shaft spline and gear were so badly worn into each other they would not simply pull straight off and we had to carefully rotate the gear on the shaft back and forth to get it to just the right position to miss the step that had been created by the wear, more than half the width of the splines had gone.