iPhone Mail # receipients listed

On my iPhone mail app, I have an email thread where it shows the sender / recipient information summary. The summary looks like this (not using real names):

What I see on iPhone Notes:

"John Smith this is the sender's info

Sanders, Steve (88 & 2 more >" This looks like a summary of the recipients

That implies to me, there are 91 recipients on this email.

And yet, when I click on the info to display more, I only see 3 total recipient names (not 88+).

What's going on here? Something to do with bcc?

Thanks in advance!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]