Yes, some other things set 0666 permissions in udev rules too but are not 0666 in reality:
/usr/lib/udev/rules.d$ ag 666
99-fuse.rules
1:KERNEL=="fuse", MODE="0666"
50-udev-default.rules
18:SUBSYSTEM=="tty", KERNEL=="ptmx", GROUP="tty", MODE="0666"
19:SUBSYSTEM=="tty", KERNEL=="tty", GROUP="tty", MODE="0666"
39:SUBSYSTEM=="drm", KERNEL=="renderD*", GROUP="video", MODE="0666"
40:SUBSYSTEM=="kfd", GROUP="video", MODE="0666"
77:KERNEL=="tun", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=net/tun"
79:KERNEL=="fuse", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=fuse"
82:KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"
69-libmtp.rules
736:ATTR{idVendor}=="0421", ATTR{idProduct}=="0666", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"
I wondered if there was some other mechanism simple-mtpfs used but when I installed it from the AUR to look, it installs a regular command line binary in /usr/bin.
Also if you mount say /dev/sdXX as root then chown the dir to $USER:$USER you can access and alter the files without root permissions, and those permissions for the particular device on that mountpoint are saved permanently, but that doesn't work with fuseiso / fusermount (I didn't have an mtp device handy to try but I guess it's the same) while changing /dev/fuse to 0666 and using the commands as the ordinary user works.
I read somewhere the fuse module creates /dev/fuse itself, and the fuse-openrc service modprobes the fuse module. Perhaps it gets recreated after udev has already run?