Adaptation Displacement: More people follow the Drizzt novels than the Forgotten Realms, though there is a considerable overlap.
Badass Decay: Drizzt has defeated a Balor twice, multiple dragons, and the greatest swordsmen in the land. The Neverwinter Saga and beyond has him struggling against much less powerful opponents as well as being much more realistically balanced against other opponents. No reason has been given for this, though readers might infer it's due to the immense internal struggle he's undergoing due to the death of friends, as well as the Crapsack World nature of the post-Spellplague Realms. This seems to have been done deliberately to make the stakes higher for the protagonists.
Tiago Baenre, who appears throughout the series, is considered one of Menzoberranzan's most promising young males. A ruthless, capable fighter obsessed with rising high in the storied Baenre family and becoming a legend to his people, Tiago dreams of destroying the legendary renegade Drizzt Do'Urden. Leading attacks on dwarves that kill multiple innocents, Tiago also ruins Drizzt's reputation by framing him for demon attacks, and also helps to manipulate the orcs into savagery by having the peaceful King Lorgru deposed and replaced with a brutal warlord. Tiago leads his new army in an attack on Sundabar, killing massive amounts of civilians, and personally beheads the king before turning his forces to attack the city of Nesme, resulting in the butchering of countless innocents. Tiago interrogates a survivor by threatening to kill a child, and when the survivor gives in, he has the child killed because she took too long to answer. Tiago has the duke of Nesme crucified and amuses himself by "allowing" knights to escape before hunting them down and torturing them to death, in one case having his dragon ally swallow one alive to digest him slowly. Tiago, named as Weapons Master to the restored House Do'Urden, frequently rapes the brainwashed elf Dahlia Sin'Felle who has been installed as the puppet leader of the House, and also rapes a half-drow ally to demonstrate his power over her. His obsession with Drizzt eventually leads him to hunt down the older drow to become a legend by killing him. Tiago stands apart as the single most evil male Drow in the setting, his crimes fueled by nothing more than his own ego and attempts to amuse himself.
Contested Sequel: With a series this long, it's almost inevitable.
The Dark Elf Trilogy (i.e., the prequels to the first novels), showing more of dark elf society and giving a real look inside Drizzt's head with the first essays, were Growing the Beard. For others, the loss of the more devil-may-care attitude from the Icewind Dale Trilogy in favor of what they saw as Wangst was early-onset Seasonal Rot.
Legacy of the Drow seemed to be more of a downer than the other books, featuring the first death of a Companion, a lot of tension between the characters and years-long separations, while at the same time putting characters in holding patterns for long stretches (for example, Catti-Brie and Drizzt, the resolution of which wouldn't even occur until the end of the trilogy after the next one). But the characters seemed to behave with more maturity, and the implications of some relationships were explored in-depth.
Paths of Darkness continues the trend of dealing with darker and more mature topics in a more ambiguous fashion, allowing yet more arguments from people who prefer different spots on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism...
Drizzt is a dark horse himself, since the books were originally supposed to center around Wulfgar, but the books could also be said to be one for Forgotten Realms as a whole.
Artemis Entreri is also incredibly popular, having started as an Evil Counterpart and moving on to become The Rival then gradually becoming a co-protagonist with his own books.
Jarlaxle is also one of the most popular characters in the books and has shown up in other media like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.
Fair for Its Day: The series' portrayal of Drow as inherently evil, but having an evil culture is very much this trope. In The New '10s and The New '20s however, actual racists and antisemites have latched onto this particular train of thinking to justify their views and not look racist.
Fan-Preferred Couple: Drizzt and Alustriel. The reason they never hooked up is probably because the latter is a major character of the Forgotten Realms canon and not a creation of R.A. Salvatore.
Fountain of Expies: Not in fiction per se, but Drizzt is infamous for being copied by writers hoping to imitate his success.
Drizzt and Artemis Entreri have a lot of subtext with the latter obsessed with the former for much of the series. Drizzt also begins to have a love-hate relationship with his The Rival that even he doesn't understand.
Artemis gets it again with Jarlaxle as the two become Platonic Life-Partners for decades. It helps Jarlaxle is also confirmed as bisexual by Word of God. Later, Drizzt actually passes off Artemis as Jarlaxle's lover in Charon's Claw and no one bats an eye.
Drizzt and Jarlaxle have some of this as well with the latter admiring the former significantly more than other drow males. Also, Drizzt giving Jarlaxle many passes he wouldn't give to others of his kind.
Jarlaxle Baenre, third son of Yvonnel Baenre, survived his birth and sacrifice against all odds, growing into a talented mercenary leader who thrives off the chaos of Menzoberranzan. Constantly hiring out his forces, the Bregan D'Aerthe while playing multiple sides in any conflict, Jarlaxle later goes to the surface, manages to win over nearly everyone he comes across and even uses an attempted coup from his underlings as a way to buy himself a vacation, eliminating the worst traitors and leaving the one Drow he can trust in charge of the group before manipulating powerful kingdoms, ancient dragons and monsters into doing what benefits him most. Jarlaxle is so successful and talented at his games that there are those who wonder if he is actually blessed by the normally virulently misandrist Lolth as a chosen of chaos.
King Obould Many Arrows is a brutal orc chieftain who unites the fractured orc clans into a single, unified army and unleashes them upon the north and Silverymoon. In a series of brilliant campaigns, Obould carves out the Kingdom of Dark Arrows, becoming the personal chosen of the orc god Gruumsh in the process. Obould also completely subverts a group of Drow who think they can use him, killing their priestess at the end after she attempts to murder him. Later even assisting the heroes against another army loyal to Gruumsh's old ways, Obould then sues for peace from a position of strength, knowing it will be too costly to dislodge his people from their new home. Peacefully dying later in his sleep and being made an exarch by his god, Obould is without doubt the most successful and ingenious arc to set foot on Faerun and remains one of Drizzt Do'Urden's most deadly foes.
Moral Event Horizon: Errtu crosses it by having Wulfgar raped by succubi in the Abyss for years just to spite Drizzt.
Once Original, Now Common: Drizzt was, when he was first created, actually pretty original - a Dark Elf who showed Dark Is Not Evil and wasn't just a random Mook but a main character who faces discrimination. However, this caused a slew of knockoff characters in all Dungeons and Dragons and D&D Adjacent games (slipping over to Pathfinder). This has caused "Drizzt" or even "Drow Ranger" to become somewhat of a swear word amongst players who are sick to death of Drizzt wannabes, while the concept of "chaotic neutral Drow" became such a banal staple as "human male fighter" - a thing people make as their PC when having no concept or even simple desire to bother.
Strangled by the Red String: Catti-Brie and Drizzt struck many fans as this due to the fact the latter had known her since she was a child. Quite a few thought she was closer to being Drizzt's daughter, rather than lover.
The parallel between the bigotry Drizzt suffers and the bigotry people of color in real life suffer doesn't quite hang together. While the racial stereotypes (of savagery, sadism, demon worship, etc.) attributed to real-life people of color are bullshit, 99.9% of all drow really are malicious, sadistic, demon-worshipping sociopaths who will enslave, sacrifice and kill any non-drow they can get their hands on. In this context, the nasty reactions Drizzt encounters from humans and many other races is at least understandable, considering that they don't know him and initially have little to no reason to assume he's different from his kin. Once Drizzt starts proving himself, however, the humans and others start treating him better. It could, however, be said that the discrimination Drizzt faces is more akin to that against dissidents from countries with tyrannical and xenophobic regimes, such as Nazi Germany, if said dissident leaves for a country that has been in some way targeted by his nation's regime.
A similar accusation of Broken Aesop and Strawman Has a Point being the treatment of orcs in The Hunter's Blade trilogy where the rest of the Silver Marches understandably want to repulse the invasion of King Obould's version of The Horde. However, Drizzt points out that they are people who have the potential to be better and more civilized. None of which changes the fact they are on a killing spree of conquest and displacement. It also doesn't work out in the long run.
Values Dissonance: Despite the antiracist message with saying Drow society is what's bad and not the individuals, some people can easily interpret Drizzt as being "One of the good ones". Indeed, one of the major criticisms of the book is the fact that the most frequent subjects of anti-racist messages aren't half-elves or other traditional victims of it in D&D fantasy but races that are engaged in horrible evil or invasion plans. That said...
Values Resonance: The series carried an anti-racism message well before such was common in fantasy of the time.
