How does Zend View use view helpers?

To use a helper in your view script, call it using $this->helperName(). Behind the scenes, Zend_View will load the Zend_View_Helper_HelperName class, create an object instance of it, and call its helperName() method. The object instance is persistent within the Zend_View instance, and is reused for all future calls to $this->helperName().

public function __call($name, $args)
    {
        // is the helper already loaded?
        $helper = $this->getHelper($name);

        // call the helper method
        return call_user_func_array(
            array($helper, $name),
            $args
        );
    }

From above code snippets,  we know that view uses plugin loader to load helper by name, then call the helper's method.