J.J. Abrams has been openly critical of some of the developments of Season 3, mainly from the point of view that Sydney spent too much time and too many episodes looking back at what happened to her in her missing two years and not thrusting forward. To that end, Abrams is a passionate advocate of this episode "Facade" which he and director Jack Bender refer to as their The Crying Game (1992) episode.
'Ricky Gervais''s co-writer, Stephen Merchant, was present onset throughout the filming, mainly because he didn't want to miss the opportunity of seeing an expensive Hollywood production being filmed.
A lot of Ricky Gervais's dialog was improvised, as director Jack Bender found it helped to naturalize his performance.
Ricky Gervais was very nervous about appearing in a straight acting role but was hugely relieved when told that he wouldn't have to do it in an Irish accent.
The final code was supposed to be Ryan's brother's birth date - 1124 November 24th. However people from the British isles use the day then the month. Ryan has a London accent and an Irish name so whichever way you look at it he would have used 2411 i.e. 24th November.