jQuery Plugin Tutorial Confusion

Question

I have to be missing something. The jQuery plugin tutorial found here, in the "Namespacing" -> "Plugin Methods" section, there lurks the below plugin declaration. What I am not getting here is the scope of the methods variable; I mean, shouldn't methods be defined as a var in tooltip? Once this anonymous function executes, methods goes out of scope if I understand correctly because it is defined as a var within a function. How is it that tooltip references var methods which will be out of scope when tooltip is called? What am I missing?

(function( $ ){

  var methods = {
    init : function( options ) { // THIS },
    show : function( ) { // IS   },
    hide : function( ) { // GOOD },
    update : function( content ) { // !!! }
  };

  $.fn.tooltip = function( method ) {

    // Method calling logic
    if ( methods[method] ) {
      return methods[ method ].apply( this, Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments, 1 ));
    } else if ( typeof method === 'object' || ! method ) {
      return methods.init.apply( this, arguments );
    } else {
      $.error( 'Method ' +  method + ' does not exist on jQuery.tooltip' );
    }    

  };

})( jQuery );

Answer 1

The function assigned to $.fn.tooltip is a closure ^[Wikipedia] and therefore has access to all higher scopes.

When the outer function returns, methods is not destroyed because the closure still references it.

Answer 2

It doesn't go out of scope exactly as your plugin still holds a reference to it. In JS, they are called closures.