Display logic is probably the easiest way to do that. We use display logic in some of our questionnaires with conditions that will never be met (ie only display if the parameter 'graveyard' is equal to 'SHOW' which is never used/met). Is there a reason you don't want to use display logic?
If you really don't want to use display logic, you could create a new embedded data field that is set equal to the selected choices of that specific question in the survey flow. And then for the historical data, you would have to use a combination of filtering and response editing under Data & Analysis to populate the field backwards. And then I suppose you could delete the unwanted labels now that you have all your historical data.

Using display logic works, but it would be nice to have an options that was less labor intensive (especially when you have a lot of them to hide). A "Hide" option would be great on the answer category option menu.

Thank you for the fast feedback.

A "Hide" button would be nice, for responses and entire questions.

For hiding answer choices(without using display logic), you can use advanced randomization and put all the choices that you don't want to display under - "Undisplayed items"