I don't think it's a fair comparison, really. The STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM thing is just so over-the-top, so Monty Pythonish (or something), it almost seems as if the devs may have been laughing and having fun with it as they wrote this material.

The "arrow to the knee" probably wasn't a joke. It was just something added in that seemed to fit the game...a former adventurer who's now a guard. I don't see this as a joke, as written by the devs. Rather, it became an inside joke for some reason, by all of us.

I like "stop right there criminal scum" bit myself, more than "arrow to the knee".

Were watching you.......scum

The way the ordinators said it made it my all time favorite guard comment.

Arrow to the knee got too mainstream lol half the people who say it probably never even heard of Morrowind

I heard the arrow to the knee much less than "Stop right there, criminal scum" and "Let's not make this official outlander, move along" within the game. Outside the game, it seems the arrow to the knee jokes have gone viral.

Criminal scum is way more funny then the arrow to the knee joke. You don't piss your pants when you hear a guard saying he took an arrow to the knee.

One line that I've found funny and memorable in my case is when you get near a Khajiit in Morrowind and they say, "Why do you approach?".

Fixed.

Oh, I love the Khajiit lines!

'May your path lead you to warm sands, sister.'

or maybe
'To greet you? Or eat you?'

The one from Oblivion is 1000x more funny. The whole arrow in the knee is just stupid.