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

Chevy Chase suffered a “near fatal” heart failure that led to him being put into an induced coma in 2021, as revealed in a new documentary project about the entertainment icon.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, spent a total of five full weeks in the medical facility.

“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 developed cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Medical professionals then put him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before warning his daughter, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We are unsure how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“After regaining consciousness, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she added. “He has practically come back from the dead.”

The actor personally has stated that he has dealt with cognitive issues since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he fails to recall some of his past on-set and backstage controversies, 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 on stage.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett and Laraine were called up, I was wondering as to why I wasn't. I wasn't invited. Why was I overlooked?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which triggered a period of clinical depression.