‘He returned from the brink’: Chevy Chase was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the pandemic.

The famed comedian endured a “potentially fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an induced coma during the pandemic, as revealed in a recent documentary about the American actor and comedian.

The film, titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, remained in care for five weeks in the hospital.

“Something was wrong, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart stopped. 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.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before advising his daughter, his daughter: “We might not get him back. We don’t know how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he could do was use his vocal cords,” she stated further. “He has essentially returned from the dead.”

The actor personally has said that he has experienced recall difficulties since his medical ordeal, and in the film he fails to recall some of his past on-set and backstage incidents, including a fistfight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

Chase said he was “disappointed” by his exclusion from the 50th anniversary special of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I expected 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 curious as to why I wasn't. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of depression.