(Collecting up comments into an answer. I’ll use subscripts to distinguish zero vectors in different vector spaces.)
For a linear map $T:V\to W$, the set of vectors that get “sent to zero” by $T$ is a subset (a subspace, in fact) of the domain $V$. The image of $T$, on the other hand, is a subspace of the codomain $W$. Thus in general the kernel and image of a linear map belong to different vector spaces and so the image can’t contain the kernel. Even in the case of an endomorphism $T:V\to V$ this need not be the case. For instance, the kernel of the zero map $T:v\mapsto 0_V$ is the entire space and contains $T$’s image $\{0_V\}$ instead of vice-versa. For a non-trivial example, consider an orthogonal projection onto a non-trivial proper subspace of $V$: the kernel and image have only the trivial intersection $\{0_V\}$.
The proof you’re asking about starts by choosing a basis $\{v_{r+1},\dots,v_n\}$ for $\ker(T)$ and then extending it to a complete basis $\{v_1,\dots,v_{r},v_{r+1},\dots,v_n\}$ for $V$. (Note that I’ve swapped the order of the kernel basis and the extension from that in the question, so the latter has the lower indices.) It should be pretty obvious that the set $S=\{Tv_1,\dots,Tv_n\}\subset W$ of images of these vectors under $T$ spans $\operatorname{im}(T)$. If $T$ has a nontrivial kernel, though, there’s a problem: this set can’t form a basis for the image because it’s linearly dependent. There’s at least one kernel basis vector, which means that $r\lt n$ and $Tv_i=0_W\in S$ for $i\gt r$.[1] So, we discard all of those kernel basis vectors and take the images of the remaining basis vectors of $V$: $S=\{Tv_1,\dots,Tv_r\}$. All that we’ve really done is to remove $0_W$ from $S$—by construction none of the remaining vectors are $0_W$—so we haven’t changed its span. We still have $0_W$ within the span of $S$, of course. It remains to be shown that this smaller set is linearly independent, but I think that’s beyond the scope of your question.
[1]: No set that contains the zero vector, including the singleton $\{0\}$, can be linearly independent. Since $k0=0$ for all scalars $k$, a non-trivial linear combination that equals $0$ can be created by choosing $k\ne0$ and multiplying all other vectors in the set by the scalar $0$.