They decide to visit it for its grand opening, but discover Doobner is actually Sideshow Bob, having fled Italy alongside his wife and son, Francesca, and Gino, and created the restaurant and its commercial to lure the Simpsons into a trap.

After tying up the Simpsons, Bob then reveals a stack of dynamite-filled crates, with which he will kill them, using a laptop with a defective battery as a detonator once it overheats and explodes.

Bob's entire family attends the funeral: his mother, Dame Judith Onderdonk, a well-known Shakespearean actress; his father; his brother Cecil, who has been let out of prison for the occasion; and Francesca and Gino, along with many regular Springfieldians.

The Terwilligers are then incarcerated with Bob's cellmate, Snake Jailbird, who constantly torments them while their son goes insane over fantasizing about exacting his revenge one day.

The Terwilligers seal Bart in Bob's spacious coffin and turn on the conveyor belt to the cremation furnace in an attempt to incinerate him, in reference to Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd doing the same to James Bond in the film adaptation of Diamonds Are Forever.

[3] Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode a 6.2/10, saying, "There were some enjoyable scenes, but the half hour lacked in the number of laugh-out-loud moments, and Bob's ultimate scheme wasn't very surprising.

Instead of keeping the familiar dynamics these actors had shared before (a tactic that worked extremely well in Cecil's first appearance), the series took a different route, making Mahoney's father character just as uppity and snobbish as his animated sons.

Add an excessively elaborate, unfunny plot to kill Bart and ‘Funeral for a Fiend’ failed to capture any of the early seasons' Sideshow Bob magic.

"[5] Richard Keller of AOL TV said, "While Pierce and Mahoney did have their moments it was all Grammer this episode as a Sideshow Bob coming apart at the seams."