For mDNS, yes. There are resolvers that don't even try DNS when looking up a name in .local.
Some of them were made more lenient because just as Microsoft finally stopped encouraging this nonsense, the Kubernetes people picked it up from ancient Windows Server folklore and apparently decided to make it web-scale.
Some of them were made more lenient because just as Microsoft finally stopped encouraging this nonsense, the Kubernetes people picked it up from ancient Windows Server folklore and apparently decided to make it web-scale.