Thank you, reviewing your answer and the steps I may have taken during this process leads me to the conclusion that I may have set up some syncing issue...
I am using iOS 18.1.1 on a mini 13 iPhone. These were pictures and videos I had taken with the iPhone and have been on the phone for several years. I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.1.1., and over the holiday decided to gather all my pictures from hard drives, old iPads, previous and current phone(s), etc. to sort, delete, and bring them all into one master collection point. I do not use iCloud for photos, and intentionally shut down that use on all my Apple products. These pictures were transferred from the phone to the laptop by cable. I did my stuff in Photos on the laptop, some of these pictures we're deleted from the MacBook. I then went on the iPhone and wanted to clear them all out. I deleted them and saw they would be kept on the phone for 30 days and deleted them again, but they were still showing up, (upon review of your answer, maybe somewhere in the above process I had created some linkage between the photos that I was unaware of?). I kept trying to figure out a way to get them off the phone probably also hiding and unhiding them, went to forums, looked online and couldn't find any answer to get them off the phone.
... So I did a complete reset of the phone which got rid of the pictures, intuitively shut down any syncing of Photos from the laptop to other devices, and plan to AirDrop any future items I want to save onto the laptop to then be brought into photos
Thank you for your help and response
