As far as personals go I'm willing to read an expo if its someone's site history (or exposing them for something) that I might not specifically be aware of but is a good personal angle.
In terms of other references, I think the whole point of writing a verse is that someone reading/listening to it can follow along while reading it without having to go look stuff up and come back to it. My frame of reference for pop culture/sport/etc is quite different to most Americans/Brits so this puts me at a big disadvantage, but I think you should always try write bars that are accessible for the majority of your intended audience to understand. There are literally thousands of everyday items/activities/interactions that are relatively universal in the modern world. If something's intuitive in the punch, like "I'll box your tissue like kleenex" obviously I can work out kleenex is a tissue brand even if I don't know it, and I generally give benefit of the doubt for stuff that is relatively well-known even I'm not personally familiar with it. Most of the time stuff like this is easy to work out anyway ("I'll smash your weak defence like the dolphins" - oh ok the dolphins are an American Football team so obviously they have a weak defence) but I'm willing to google it if there's no expo and it feels like something I could be expected to know.
However, if it's some super complicated niche shit honestly I think that is less skill and creativity. Imo the talent to writing a punchline is making the audience think you're doing one thing, then making them feel like "oh my god how did I not see that coming" after you do the punchline. If your punch is a reference to one specific scene from a niche movie I've never heard of, firstly that will have no impact on me even after googling it, but secondly I think its a lack of skill. I could write any random punch setup - e.g. "I'll put this duck in the box to add to my collection" - then trawl through every movie I've ever watched to find a reference that matches it - Howard Duck in the background of one scene at The Collector's place in GOTG Vol. 2 - but that's not really clever writing, it's just having watched lots of movies. I think it takes much more skill to stick to much better known source material - e.g. almost everyone is familiar with the plot of Avengers Endgame - and then see what fresh angles you can work out of that.
Even with an expo, if a punch has truthfully had no impact on me as a voter because I don't know or care about the subject matter and can't imagine myself doing so, I'm not gonna count it much. I won't count it against you as long as it seems cleanly executed and makes sense, but I'm not gonna pretend it's great when the whole point of a verse is to entertain me and it was only ever gonna confuse me.
(Specifically in concept battles I think the bar for how niche you can go gets a lot lower - the whole point is to go in deep on a concept so that's the time for ultra-specific punches n long expos. I love doing concept battles on niche topics I know lots about cos I get to use bars I would never get away with in a regular battle lol)
That is my grumbling for the day haha
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