Old picklist values reflecting on records

Hi,

There is a picklist field i.e. Suspect Type where few values were disabled at least couple of months back however on certain records, still those disabled values are reflecting. And if I click on Edit button on any such records to change that value, the same field reflects as blank i.e. The disabled value disappears on clicking the edit button.

I'm not very sure however it seems to be very awkward behavior.

According to my understanding, if there were few records at disabled values then they should simply reflect as BLANK? And once we re-fill that picklist field with some other value from drop-down, that value will start reflecting there-on. Please correct me if I'm wrong.