‘He has come back from the dead’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the pandemic.

The famed comedian experienced a “near fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being placed in an induced coma in 2021, per details from a new documentary project about the comedy star.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, was hospitalized for five full weeks in the medical facility.

“There was a problem, 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 got cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Doctors then placed him into a coma for over a week, before cautioning his child, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We don’t know how cognizant he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“When he woke up, all he could do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has essentially come back from the dead.”

He himself has stated that he has suffered memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal disputes, including a physical altercation with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live dressing room.

He expressed he was “disappointed” by his absence from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in the audience but not featured.

“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I assumed that I should have 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 was not. No one asked me to. Why was I excluded?”

Chase, 82, almost died in 1980 when he was subjected to an electrical shock on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which led to a period of clinical depression.