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

The famed comedian suffered a “potentially fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being placed in an induced coma during the pandemic, according to a new documentary project about the entertainment icon.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five full weeks in the medical facility.

“He wasn't right, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart stopped. 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.”

Doctors then placed him into a coma for over a week, before advising his child, Caley: “He may not recover. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. Get ready for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she added. “He has practically been resurrected.”

Chase himself has stated that he has experienced memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the film he does not recollect some of his past on-set and backstage controversies, including a physical altercation with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

Chase said he was “hurt” by his exclusion from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL earlier this year, 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 assumed that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett Morris and Laraine were called up, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of depression.