Notes:

The Message was the last episode to be made. The cast and crew were told, during the fiming, that Firefly had been cancelled. So when it came time to film the funeral scene, it had a little extra poignancy for everyone.

Jonathan Woodward (Tracey) has been in three Whedon shows: Buffy, Angel and Firefly.
The director of the episode, Tim Minear, calls this a "spare parts episode". The space station was built from spare pieces from every set they had made.

Jayne's hat was inspired by the costume designer, Shawna Tipcic. Her Grandmother would make her a pair of knitted slippers for every Christmas, with giant pompoms on them.

The scene where the crew are standing around Tracey's body while listening to his recorded mesage provided one of the best pieces on the gag reel. Nathan Fillion stayed ahead of the camera as it panned around, so that he was filmed standing by every single crew member with a different expression on his face for each one.

Kaylee has a model of Han Solo in carbonite in the engine room. It can be seen to her left as she sits in the hammock.

The chase scene in the snow came about before the episode had been written. The visual effects guys came up with it, using a program called Terragen. The Message was written around the scene.

As this was the last episode to be filmed, Alan Tudyk decided to do away with Wash's usual calm in the face of danger.