In the first film, theres something of an Easter Egg in the casting of all of Mills fellow ex-agency friends. All three of them played spies or appeared in movies or TV shows centred on spies. Jon Gries was in The Pretender (1996), Leland Orser was in both The Pretender (1996) and 24 (2001), and David Warshofsky has made something of a career appearing in minor roles in spy and political intrigue projects. He must just have one of those faces. The second film also has a nod to Midnight Express in the scene that sees Mills kill someone using a coat hook - the same method of dispatch famously shown in the other Istanbul set film.
