‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the pandemic.

The famed comedian endured a “life-threatening” heart failure that resulted in him being placed in an medically induced coma in 2021, as revealed in a recent documentary about the American actor and comedian.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars twice, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

“He wasn't right, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart stops. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Medical professionals then put him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before advising his child, his daughter: “He may not recover. We don’t know how present he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has practically returned from the dead.”

Chase himself has said that he has suffered memory problems since his hospital stay, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal controversies, including a physical altercation with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

He expressed he was “hurt” by his omission from the 50th anniversary special of SNL recently, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.

“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine took the stage, I was wondering as to why I didn’t. I wasn't invited. Why was I excluded?”

Now 82, Chase, almost died in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of clinical depression.