Hamlet's soliloquy is almost too famous. I won't go so far as to say that it has become a joke, but it is the most famous passage in all of Shakespeare, and it certainly serves as a subject of jokes.

Electrical engineers used to hang up a diagram on a bulletin board called the "Hamlet circuit:"

<a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DduMigqU8AM5Hyu?format=jpg&name=small" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hamlet circuit</a>

The symbols were used to represent logic gates. Signals were identified on diagrams by designations like 3C or 2B. The triangle with the circle at its tip is an inverter, expression the logical relation "not." The symbol at the right is a "or" gate, which raises the output if one or the other or both inputs are raised. So the whole circuit expresses the Boolean relationship, "2B or not 2B." Part of the joke is that it is a useless circuit that does nothing, because since either <em>2B</em> is true, or <em>not 2B</em> is true, <em>2B or not 2B </em>is always true and the output simply remains high regardless of the input.

To kick the bucket = to die it originates from the time when coffins had a bell on top with a rope going into the coffin and the wrongly diagnosed dead person who woke up in a/the/their coffin could pull the rope to draw attention the they were alive.

Apparently it was common for doctors to make mistakes sometimes if a person were in a coma or similar situation only.

Not sure how this connection came about, it should be to pull the rope or ring the bell.

Another theory is that it stems from the last death throes of a person having last second muscular contractions causing a kicking out of the leg.

Also there are these theories and speculations.

When a person wishes to commit suicide they stand on a metal bucket or pale and the kick it way from themselves.

Pigs used to be slaughtered by being hung from a bucket = archaic term for a beam

And this I think is the most plausible theory, in the catholic religion when a person dies a 'bucket of holy water' is placed at their feet, for mourners and visitors to sprinkle holy water onto the body.

@David

Yeah, they're really the same. Some others I could think of are:

das Zeitliche segnen = to consecrate the temporality (mostly translated as "to shuffle off this mortal coil")

über den Jordan (die Wupper) gehen = to cross the Jordan (Wupper) river

abkratzen = to scape off

We have the exact same expression in German: sich im Grab umdrehen.

Other idiomatic and a bit funny expressions for dying or being dead are:

ins Gras beißen = to bite into the grass

sich die Radieschen von unten anschauen = to look at the radish from underneath

den Löffel abgeben = to return the spoon

in die ewigen Jagdgründe eingehen = to enter the eternal hunting grounds

With regard to "bites the dust," I now cannot hear this phrase without thinking of this 1980 song by the band <em>Queen, </em>"Another One Bites the Dust."