The location of this episode is the same reservation where Walt and Jesse cooked their very first batch of meth in Breaking Bad.
Vince Gilligan said about this episode: "This thing was the single hardest thing I've ever directed. Ever. "
In a making-of featurette for this episode, Jonathan Banks confirmed that Mike was a sniper in Vietnam, which explains his impressive knowledge and skill shown throughout the series.
The shooting conditions of this episode were truly brutal. It was 100 degrees on location, and according to Vince Gilligan who directed this episode, there were crew members who were solely responsible to look for rattlesnakes throughout the shoot, to make sure no cast or crew members were bitten.
The canteen Mike uses in the desert is a World War II vintage (ca. 1942 or 1943) aluminum canteen with a plastic cap.