Bullets sound, a man topples to the ground, and the camera pulls back to reveal the smirking shooter, dressed in a sharp black suit.

We’ve all seen images like these many times, while munching popcorn and staring at a movie screen. Violent death is Hollywood’s big attraction.

But the terrible pictures scrolling past our seared eyeballs Monday on news websites, Twitter feeds and other outlets weren’t clips from a film, although they resembled something from a James Bond thriller or Quentin Tarantino’s crime drama Reservoir Dogs.

They were from video, captured by multiple lenses, of a real-life political assassination in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov was shot in the back at near point-blank range while touring an art gallery unveiling of an exhibit of Russian photographs.

Karlov was killed by a man believed to be Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, an off-duty Turkish police officer. He crouched in a military stance, both hands on his weapon for better aim, a pose familiar to anyone who has ever watched a spy or hired assassin take down a soft target in a movie or TV show.

Altintas shouted that the murder was in retaliation for Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war and the continuing battle over Aleppo: “We die in Aleppo, you die here!”

The murder looked as real as a movie, which is another way of saying that it’s hard to register as something that happened in the real world. I was on Twitter when the news broke and I almost scrolled right past the first images, which were wedged between screen grabs of Harrison Ford aiming a gun at Ryan Gosling, taken from the just-released teaser for next year’s Blade Runner sequel.

“This looks super fake,” someone posted on one of the many video clips of the assassination that appeared almost immediately on YouTube and elsewhere online.

Was he/she trolling, or registering a sincere observation? Were they trying to critique the killing, the way a critic does a movie? It did seem strange that there was no blood easily visible on the floor of the art gallery, despite the number of shots fired.

It’s indicative of our querulous era of fake news that you can’t take online comments at face value, even if they seem reasonable.

No question, though, that we’ve all become accustomed to seeing horrible things on the screens we live with: on our desks, laps and in our hands. Terrorists have for years posted gruesome mini-movies of decapitations, viewable during coffee breaks or while eating lunch.

Monday’s news alone also included footage of a Canadian hostage and his family being held by the Taliban, and the horrific aftermath of a truck plowing through a crowded market in Berlin.

Long ago, prior to the Internet and the loosening of broadcast censorship rules, you used to have to pay to see carnage at the movies, which were — and still are — subject to age restrictions.

No doubt psychologists will be weighing in on what damage it does to the psyche to see murder on our smartphones and tablets. They’re too late. Horror is just a Google search or a Twitter swipe away.

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“Warning: This video contains footage which some people may find upsetting,” Britain’s The Mirror posted on its website, while presenting scenes from the shooting.

The warning should have read: “Some people may find this footage upsetting, but we’re all going to watch it regardless. Pass the popcorn.”