Toward the end of the episode, David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce) said to his grandson, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), that "Smiley was always coming back from redundancy." Gary Oldman played MI6 agent George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) based on the novel by John le Carré. In the film, Smiley comes back from retirement to smoke out a Soviet agent.